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LITTLE  ILLUSTRATED  BOOKS  ON 

OLD    FRENCH    FURNITURE 

II.     FRENCH    FURNITURE 
UNDER   LOUIS    XIV 


Large  Arm-chair  covered  in  Wool  Velvet 

(End  of  the  Louis  XIV  style) 


LITTLE   ILLUSTRATED   BOOKS   ON 
FRENCH  FURNITURE  II 


FRENCH   FURNITURE 
UNDER  LOUIS  XIV 

BY  ROGER  DE  FELICE 


Translated  by 
F.  M.  ATKINSON 


ILLUSTRATED. 


NEW  YORK 
FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 


Printed  in  Great  Britain 


hi  K  5  b  7-^ 

INTRODUCTION:  SOME  SETS 

OF  FURNITURE  UNDER  m  \/ ' 

LOUIS  XIV 

The  Louis  XIV  style  is  one  that  chance  has  en- 
dowed with  a  splendid  name,  Louis  Ouatorze. 
.  .  .  Those  sonorous,  sumptuous  syllables,  as 
rich  as  the  gold  of  the  Gallery  of  Mirrors  at 
Versailles,  are  they  not  in  themselves  completely 
expressive  ?  If  the  Louis  XV  style  was  to  ex- 
press a  whole  society  of  voluptuous  refinement, 
the  Louis  XIV  style  is  verily  the  style  of  the 
King.  It  was  to  satisfy  his  taste,  to  express 
his  mind,  to  titillate  his  pride  and  to  proclaim 
his  glory  that  Le  Brun  and  Le  Pautre  devised 
their  pompous  decorations,  that  Perrault  and 
Mansard  marshalled  their  columns  and  raised 
their  cupolas,  that  Le  Nostre  planted  his  alleys 
on  lines  meted  out  by  stretched  cords,  that  the 
Kellers  founded  bronze,  that  Domenico  Cucci 
and  Claude  Ballin  chased  precious  metals,  that 
Andre-Charles  Boulle  cunningly  wedded  brass 
and  tortoise  shell  with  ebony  in  the  Louvre, 
and  at  the  Gobelins  the  lapidaries  matched  the 
stones  of  Florence,  the  cabinet-makers  put 
together  their  ingenious  cabinets,  the  silver- 
smiths made  tables  and  pots  for  orange  trees  out 
of  solid  silver,  the  tapestry  workers  wove  their 
enormous    hangings   stitch   by    stitch,   while   at 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

Tourlaville    the    glass    workers     made     mirrors 
larger  and  clearer  than  those  of  Venice, 

Whole  volumes  might  be  written  on  the 
Louis  XV  and  Louis  XVI  styles  without  even  a 
mention  of  the  princes  whose  names  they  bear, 
but  this  would  be  quite  impossible  with  the 
style  we  are  about  to  discuss  in  this  little  book. 
Although  he  had  not,  whatever  that  sharp- 
tongued  Saint  Simon  may  say,  "  a  mind  rather 
below  the  average,"  Louis  the  Great  was  quite 
ordinary  in  intelligence  and  was  furthermore 
extremely  ignorant,  two  defects  that  he  redeemed 
in  the  exercise  of  his  vocation  as  king  by  dint  of 
good  will,  application,  and  hard  work;  he  was 
not,  as  we  would  say,  much  of  an  artist — and  he 
clearly  proved  this  on  the  day  when,  in  order  to 
remedy  the  distressed  state  of  his  finances,  he 
decided  with  equal  absurdity  and  magnanimity 
to  melt  down  all  his  prodigious  store  of  plate, 
whose  bullion  value  was  nothing  in  comparison 
with  its  artistic  value,  while  he  kept  his  diamonds 
— but  he  insisted  on  deciding  everything,  and 
always  made  some  alteration  in  the  designs 
submitted  to  him.  He  had  of  course  his  own 
personal  taste,  which  Colbert  consulted  and 
which  Le  Brun,  who  shared  it,  contrived  to 
impose  upon  the  artists  of  every  kind  who 
worked  under  his  absolute  domination.  What 
was  specially  dear  to  this  super-man,  who,  as 
Mile,  de  Scudery  says,  "  when  playing  biUiards 
retained  the  demeanour  befitting  the  master  of 
the    world,"    was   majesty  and   grandeur  allied 


INTRODUCTION 


Vll 


with  sumptuousness ;  and  also  symmetry  and 
regularity ;  qualities  which,  as  we  shall  see,  are 
the  fundamental  characteristics  of  the  style  to 
which  he  has  given  his  name. 

The  best  artists  and  craftsmen,  then,  worked 
to  the  orders  of  the  King,  who  continually 
needed  new  furniture  for  his  royal  mansions 
of  the  Louvre,  Saint-Germain,  Fontainebleau, 
Marly;  they  worked  for  the  princes  of  the 
blood,  for  the  Ministers  of  State.  This  engrossed 
all,  or  nearly  all,  their  output ;  they  were  taken 
away  from  their  guilds  and  brigaded  at  the 
Gobelins  or  the  Louvre,  where  they  were  sub- 
jected to  a  rigid  discipline.  The  great  nobles, 
the  wealthy  financiers,  the  high  magistrates, 
imitated  the  Court  according  to  their  means, 
but  were  obliged  to  fall  back  upon  second  rank 
purveyors  and  on  less  precious  materials.  Their 
furniture  is  none  the  less  in  the  same  style 
as  that  made  for  the  King,  all  blazing  with 
magnificence. 

If  we  come  down  one  degree  lower,  and  try  to 
make  acquaintance  with  the  homes  of  the  well- 
to-do  bourgeoisie  or  gentlemen  with  good  broad 
lands,  as  they  are  disclosed  in  the  inventories 
made  after  their  owners'  death  and  in  the  reports 
on  the  affixing  of  seals  on  property,  which 
inventories  have  been  preserved  in  great  numbers 
and  in  some  cases  published,  and  are  the  most 
authentic  sources  of  information  on  this  subject, 
do  we  always  find  furniture  of  the  Louis  XIV 
style  ?     We  come  too  often  on  tables   or   arm- 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

chairs  a  piliers  tors  or  a  colonnes  torses  to  feel 
quite  certain  of  it.  In  reality  the  joiners 
continued  generally  to  make  for  what  was  called 
" /^  noblesse  distin^iiee^^  people  in  military  or 
civil  employment,  rich  traders,  propertied  middle 
class  folk,"  plain  undisguised  Louis  XIII  furni- 
ture, even  down  to  the  time  when  the  suppler 
shapes  of  the  Regency  and  the  Louis  XV  period 
were  imposed  upon  them.  Better  still,  in  more 
than  one  region,  but  especially  in  Guienne  and 
in  Gascony,  they  continued  throughout  the 
whole  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  make,  along- 
side of  the  great  Louis  XV  linen  cupboards  with 
S-shaped  pediment,  the  cupboards  with  four 
doors  with  panels  decorated  with  "  diamond 
points,"  known  as  "  cabinets  "  in  those  provinces." 

One  or  two  of  these  inventories,  which  convey 
so  rich  an  impression  of  vivid  reality,  will  allow 
us  to  penetrate  into  the  homes  of  this  middle 
class  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

Shall  we  first  of  all  enter  the  house  of  Messire 
Jean  de  Layat,  former  Treasurer-General  of  the 
King's  Household  ?  This  is  in  the  rue  de  Clery, 
close  to  the  Porte  Saint-Denis,  which  is  still  all 
white,  for  we  are  in  the  year  1686.  M.  de 
Layat  is   wealthy :  a  year   ago  he  sold  his  ofHce 

1  Intermediate  between  the  haute  noblesse  and  the  country 
squires,  who  were  often  very  poor. 

2  We  must  not,  however,  exaggerate :  many  cupboards  whose 
simplicity  shows  that  they  were  meant  for  middle  class  use  have 
also,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  second  part  of  this  volume,  the  two 
doors,  the  straight  cornice,  the  plain  panels,  and  other  character- 
istics besides,  that  belong  undoubtedly  to  the  Louis  XIV  style 
and  the  same  may  be  said  of  several  types  of  seats. 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

for  a  high  price,  and  he  possesses  somewhere 
around  400,000  livres,  or  about  two  million 
francs  in  present-day  money.  And  yet,  perhaps  a 
trifle  mean,  or  exceedingly  prudent,  he  has  only 
an  establishment  very  far  below  his  condition.  His 
house  is  small,  inconvenient,  comprising  very  few 
rooms  arranged  in  the  old-fashioned  way. 

In  the  stables  we  have  two  horses  "  with  long 
tails " ;  in  the  coach-house  a  carosse  coupe  with 
six  plate  glass  windows  "  in  the  Venetian  style  "  : 
a  modest  equipage.  On  the  ground  floor  are 
M.  de  Layat's  cabinet  and  the  lower  hall.  In 
the  cabinet  the  Treasurer-General  used  to  receive 
callers  on  business,  seated  in  an  arm-chair  covered 
with  green  cloth  before  his  walnut  bureau  with 
five  drawers.  Upon  the  bureau  was  a  writing 
desk  of  painted  wood  ;  for  the  visitors  there  were 
seven  chairs  with  twisted  legs  covered  in  plain 
moqiiette;  adorning  the  chimney-piece  six 
alabaster  figures,  some  porcelain  cups  and  some 
large  shells,  as  fashion  demanded.  Ranged  along 
the  foot  of  the  wall  stand  the  books :  no  great 
reader  is  AI.  de  Layat,  for  there  are  just  seventy- 
nine  all  told,  five  of  them  foHos,  and  most  of 
them  pious  works.  No  hangings.  All  this  is 
very  modest :  M.  de  Layat  would  not  like  any- 
one seeing  his  furniture  to  imagine  that  he  has 
made  a  big  fortune  in  the  King's  service ;  and 
it  would  distress  him  exceedingly  that  we  should 
know  that  this  chest  in  the  corner  is  a  strong 
box  in  which  there  lie  many  a  bag  of  louis,  of 
pistoles,  gold  crowns  and  Spanish  doubloons. 


X  INTRODUCTION 

In  the  lower  hall  adjoining  we  see  the  first 
hint  of  the  dining-room  that  will  not  come  into 
general  use  for  a  score  of  years,  for  it  is  furnished 
with  an  oval  table  made  of  deal,  on  folding  legs, 
with  its  green  serge  cover  and  six  beechwood 
chairs  with  twisted  uprights,  covered  with 
moquette  and  stuffed  with  flock. 

Let  us  now  go  upstairs.  As  we  cross  the 
antechamber  we  see  between  walls  hung  with  a 
German  tapestry  containing  human  figures,  two 
tables  covered  with  Turkey  carpet,  four  chairs 
covered  with  tulip-patterned  moquette,  and  we 
guess  that  M.  and  Mme.  de  Layat  are  fond  of  a 
game  of  three-handed  ombre  in  the  chimney 
corner  with  some  old  friend ;  for  here  is  a 
triangular  card-table  covered  with  green  serge 
standing  on  its  twisted  walnut  pillars.  Let  us 
lift  the  imitation  {cafart  *)  '  damask  door  curtain 
lined  with  green  linen  and  pass  into  the  "petite 
chambre."  Here  is  where  the  owners  of  the 
house  sleep,  in  "two  little  beds,  very  plain,"  so 
plain  that  the  inventory  does  not  describe  them. 
On  the  wall  there  is  a  mirror  in  a  black  frame. 
The  table,  walnut  with  ebony  filleting,  is 
accompanied  by  two  round  tables  for  candle- 
sticks or  girandoles;  two  arm-chairs  are  covered 
with  flowered  velvet,  four  others  are  of  carved 
walnut  ;  a  cabinet,  which  contains  Mme.  de 
Layat's  jewels,  her  knick-knacks,  her  lace,  and  a 
few  curiosities,  is  a  rather  elegant  piece  ;  it  is 
"  marquetry  in  pewter,  ebony  and  tortoise-shell, 

I  The  asterisk  refers  to  the  index  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

and  composed  of  two  giiichets '  and  nine 
drawers." 

A  "  passage  serving  as  a  vestibule  "  brings  us  to 
the  state-room.  Hung  with  Flemish  verdure 
tapestry  with  small  figures,  it  is  furnished  with 
five  arm-chairs  and  five  ordinary  chairs;  four 
paintings  on  canvas  were  not  considered  worthy 
of  having  the  subjects  or  the  artists  mentioned. 

This  state-room  is  the  salon,  and  also,  when 
friends  have  been  invited,  the  dining-room  ;  but 
no  one  sleeps  in  it,  except  perhaps,  on  occasion, 
some  distinguished  guest.  The  bed  is  the  first 
thing  to  draw  our  eyes :  immense,  beplumed, 
overladen  with  draperies,  it  is  a  couche  a  has 
piliers,  an  '"  angel  "  bed  ;  it  has  bonnes  graces* 
and  cantonnieres*  and  four  large  curtains  of 
pink  damask  with  big  white  flowers ;  the  pentes  * 
of  the  tester,  the  great  bed  end  and  the  curving 
end  {chantourne)*  the  three  pieces  of  the 
valance  {soubassement)*  the  counterpane,  are 
all  white  satin,  embroidered  here  "with  several 
different  designs  in  gold  and  silk,"  and  there 
"  with  silk  twist."  No  fringes,  a  plain  molet*  of 
imitation  gold.  The  tester  is  crowned  with  four 
knobs  covered  with  damask  and  satin,  adorned 
with  tufts  of  white  ostrich  feathers.  If  we  pull 
back  the  counterpane  we  shall  find  a  coverlet 
made  of  alternate  squares  of  China  satin  and 
chintz.  We  need  not  be  surprised  to  see  in  the 
house  of  these  old  people  a  bed  with  such  delicate 

I  A  very  small  cupboard  with  two  doors,  surrounded  with 
drawers. 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

and  tender  colouring  :  it  is  the  custom  of  the 
times. 

A  handsome  oval  table  in  the  new  fashion  is 
made  of  red  Languedoc  marble,  edged  with 
black  marble,  and  set  on  its  base  with  six  columns 
of  carved  wood,  painted  azure  and  relieved  with 
gilding;  two  gilded  round  tables  match  with  it. 
The  sofa  of  carved  wood  painted  cedar  colour  is 
equipped  with  a  mattress  and  two  bolsters  of 
striped  brocade  ;  a  valance  with  silk  fringe  falls 
to  the  very  floor  ;  the  same  brocade  covers  the  six 
arm-chairs  "  of  lacquered  wood,  azure  "  that  are 
ranged,  three  to  the  right,  three  to  the  left,  on 
each  side  of  the  bed.  A  small  chair  contents 
itself  with  a  modest  dress  of  moqucttc. 

The  walls  display  three  large  tapestries  from 
Auvergne  ^  with  figures.  Near  the  bed  there  is  a 
wooden  crucifix  on  a  background  of  black  velvet 
with  a  gilded  frame,  and  a  mirror  with  its  frame 
of  plate  glass  with  plaques,  corners,  capital  and 
other  ornaments  of  gilt  brass,  both  hanging  by 
gold  cords.  Besides  these  there  are  a  portrait 
of  the  King,  painted  on  canvas  after  M.  Mignard ; 
a  Family  of  Darius  on  canvas  "after  the  print 
by  M.  Le  Brun  " ;  and  again,  set  on  its  console- 
table,  a  chiming  clock  "made  by  a  Paris 
workman,"  with  its  case  of  marquetry  on  tortoise- 
shell,  decorated  with  brass  pilasters  and  vases. 
Lastly,  the  chimney-piece  boasts  a  set  of 
ornaments  displayed  on  miniature  consoles :  two 
vases  made  of    ostrich  eggs  mounted  in   silver, 

I  Aubusson  or  Felletin. 


INTRODUCTION  xili 

two  others  made  of  cocoanuts  on  silver  feet, 
three  large  shells  of  mother  of  pearl,  and  eighteen 
little  cups  of  Chinese  porcelain. 

Now  let  us  visit  old  M.  Nicolas  Boileau,  one 
of  the  Forty  of  the  Academic  Frangaise.     He  is 
the    most   home-keeping  of  men:  born   in   the 
court  of   the  Palais,  at  the  foot    of  the  Sainte 
Chapelle,   he   is  now,   at    three  score    and  ten, 
living,    as  he   will   die,   in   the   shadow   of   the 
cathedral,    "the  Notre   Dame   cloisters."      We 
are  prone  to  imagine  this  crusty  bachelor,  who 
never  was  anyone's  lover  but  the  Muses',  breath- 
ing   the    dust    of  his    aged    foHos    in    profound 
disdain  of  all  the    refinements  and  elegancies  of 
life.     How  far   from    the  truth !    The   smartest 
men  in  society  delight  to  frequent  his  company  ; 
in  old  days  he  used  to  have  the  Dukes  de  Vivonne 
and  de  Vitry  to  supper ;  even   now  he  has  for 
visitors  the  greatest  swells  at  court,  the  Marquis 
de  Termes  or  M.  de  Ponchartrain  the  younger, 
the  secretary  of  state  for  naval  affairs.     Without 
being  very  rich,  this  bourgeois  among  bourgeois 
has    ample   means,  and  we  know  the  scorn  and 
contempt   he  flings   at   poets  less  well  off  than 
himself.     In  his  presses  he  has  plate  to  the  value 
of  five  thousand   livres  and  more  ;  in   his  stable 
"  two   black  coated   mares,  with  tail,   mane  and 
ears  undocked,  of   eight  years   or   thereabouts," 
who  draw  him  to  his  house  at   Auteuil  in   "  a 
carosse  coupe,  with  braces  and  springs,  and  three 
plate    glass   windows,    lined   within    with    slate 
coloured   cloth,  the  outside  with  an    edging  of 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

aurora  coloured  silk  fringe,  with  cushion  and 
curtains."  His  house  in  reality  is  as  well 
furnished  and  equipped  as  that  of  the  very  M. 
de  Layat  who  not  so  long  ago,  as  Treasurer  of 
the  King's  household,  regulated  the  quarterly 
payment  of  the  pension  the  poet  received  from 
his  Majesty. 

The  antechamber  is    very  plain,  though  the 
walls  are   adorned  with  six  high  narrow  lengths 
of    tapestry    in    "  verdure  d'Auvergne,"  repre- 
senting animals ;   but  his  own  chamber  is  of  an 
"exquisite  niceness."     This  is  hung  with  white 
and  crimson   damask,  in  wide  alternate   stripes, 
there  is  a  portiere  of  the  same,  while  the  window, 
as  is  customary,  has  only  a  curtain  of  white  linen. 
A  crystal   chandelier  hangs  in  the  middle  of  the 
room,  four  girandoles  on  mirror  plaques  complete 
the   lighting :   a  large    handsome    mirror    in   its 
"  border  "  also   of  mirror    glass,  with   a  capital, 
and  a  little  pier-glass  with  gilded  frame,  help  to 
brighten  the  room.    This  Despreaux  is  a  strange 
person,    a    real    original   character  :    he   has   an 
exceedingly  handsome  bed,   and  all  to  sleep    in 
himself!     Indeed  there  isn't  another  bed  in   his 
house,  except  the  modest  pallets  of  his  servants. 
This  bed  is  a  four-poster,  made  of  walnut,  and 
its  curtains,  tester  and  head  are  silver  moire  and 
green  damask  embroidered  with   gold  flowers,  in 
stripes;  the  cantonmcres,  bonnes  graces,  pentes 
and   the   four   knobs   are  crimson   velvet   edged 
with  gold    galoon ;    other  large   light    curtains 
covering  the    first  are  of  crimson  taffeta  ;  the 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

counterpane  is  silver  moire  with  a  wide  border 
of  green  damask,  embroidered  with  flowers  in 
silk  and  gold.  A  very  gay  room  is  this,  with  all 
these  silks  of  dazzling  hues  :  in  these  days  there 
is  no  shrinking  from  setting  complementary 
colours  side  by  side.  Two  armchairs,  five 
ordinary  chairs  and  a  stool  are  of  walnut  wood 
and  crimson  velvet,  a  small  sofa  and  two  arm- 
chairs of  gilded  wood  are  covered  in  brocade 
embroidered  with  flowers  in  silver.  Of  the 
three  tables  one,  and  three  gueridons  as  well,  is 
of  marquetry  in  coloured  woods,  the  second  is 
walnut  parcel  gilt,  the  last  is  a  writing  table  of 
wild  cherry.  In  the  fireplace  there  are  great 
fire  dogs  with  brass  knobs.  Lastly,  the  chiming 
clock  in  its  case  of  brass  and  tortoise-shell 
marquetry  is  a  very  handsome  piece,  it  will  figure 
by  itself  in  the  inventory,  after  its  owner's  death, 
at  a  sum  equal  to  that  set  down  for  all  the  chairs 
together,  as  much  as  the  plate  glass  mirror, 
which  is  assessed  at  half  the  value  of  the  bed. 

Opening  out  of  his  own  chamber  the  "Law- 
giver of  Parnassus  "  has  three  rooms  or  cabinets. 
The  one  in  which  he  works  has  walls  of  painted 
wainscoting.  In  front  of  his  bureau,  made  of 
walnut  veneer,  equipped  with  numerous  drawers, 
is  the  black  morocco  arm-chair  in  which  the  old 
poet  sits,  snugly  wrapped  about  with  an 
"  Armenian  robe  of  scarlet  cloth,  with  gold 
button-holes,  lined  with  skins."  The  other  scats, 
an  arm-chair  and  an  ordinary  chair  of  turned 
wood,    and   two  carved    chairs,  are   covered   in 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

tapestry  of  "  Turkish  "  *  stitch.  An  oak  table  is 
hidden  by  a  cover  of  green  cloth,  and  carries 
two  little  Chinese  coffers  or  caskets  made  of 
wood.  The  books  marshal  their  tawny  gilded 
backs  on  eight  shelves  made  of  deal  and  edged 
with  green  cloth ;  in  front  of  the  fireplace  is  a 
screen  filled  with  green  damask,  on  the  walls,  on 
their  brackets,  two  busts  of  bronzed  plaster 
(doubtless  Aristotle  and  Horace  ?),  a  chiming 
clock  in  its  marquetry  case,  not  so  valuable  as 
that  in  the  bed-chamber,  and  another  little  clock, 
"an  alarm  with  weights  and  cords."  Here  is  a 
gentleman  whose  hours  are  well  governed  !  The 
mantelpiece  carries  on  its  shelf  and  its  little 
brackets  the  inevitable  set  of  ornaments ;  forty- 
five  pieces  of  Chinese  porcelain,  bottles,  cups, 
saucers  and  other  things,  two  lions  on  their  delft 
feet,  four  "pieces  of  painted  earthenware"  and 
four  little  brass  busts. 

The  second  cabinet  is  less  severe.  It  has  two 
windows,  and  is  hung  with  white  and  fiame- 
coloured  damask ;  it  contains  the  greater  part  of 
the  books,  in  three  low  "  bookcase  "  cupboards 
with  two  doors  adorned  with  a  trellis  of  brass 
wire  :  one  of  these  is  a  handsome  piece,  in  mar- 
quetry of  brass  on  ebony,  the  others  are  plainer, 
made  of  cedar  and  of  walnut.  These  are  pieces 
of  furniture  greatly  in  fashion^  quite  recently 
invented  :  for  all  his  great  age  Despreaux  can  be 
no  enemy  to  novelties.  Like  all  his  contem- 
poraries, from  bishops  to  kings,  his  eyes  gladly 
find  diversion  in  the  fantastic  works  of  the  Far 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

East.  Here  is  a  cabinet  of  Chinese  lacquer  with 
Httle  drawers,  and  porcelain  everywhere  :  sixteen 
pieces  on  the  chimney-piece  mingled  with  ten 
pieces  of  "  fayance  d'Hollande."  ^  A  bratzier^ 
of  well-polished  copper  stands  on  its  iron  base, 
and  there  is  an  oak  table  covered  with  a  Turkey 
carpet  and  carrying  a  brass  spy-glass,  various 
coffers  and  writing  desks.  The  seats  are  of 
many-coloured  tapestry  in  Turkey  stitch,  and 
there  is  a  mirror  framed  in  gilt  wood.  The 
windows  have  double  curtains,  one  of  white 
linen,  the  other  of  cherry-coloured  damask  lined 
with  taffeta.  Here  also  there  are  fine  warm 
colours  everywhere. 

Finally,  in  the  last  cabinet,  with  no  fireplace, 
whose  walls  are  covered  with  a  commonplace 
Bergamo^  tapestry  with  big  stripes  laden  with 
flowers,  a  walnut  cupboard  in  two  parts  with 
four  doors,  turned  chairs  covered  with  Bruges 
satin,*  a  walnut  table  with  a  serge  cover  bordered 
with  flame-coloured  damask,  a  coffer  of  leather 
studded  with  nails ;  a  mirror  with  frame  and  top 
of  walnut  and  with  copper  plaques ;  and  lastly,  a 
wash-basin  and  salver  of  faience,  both  handsome 
and  rare  pieces,  for  they  will  be  set  down  at 
thirty  livres,  a  considerable  sum  at  the  moment 
we  are  considering.  The  cupboard  in  this 
cabinet  will  be  valued  merely  at  ten  livres. 

Let  us  add,  throughout  these  five  rooms,  forty- 

1  Of  Delft. 

2  Brasero. 

3  Coarse,     common      tapestry,     originally    imported    from 
Bergamo,  but  then  made  at  Rouen. 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

two  pictures  on  canvas  and  on  wooden  panels, 
of  which  wc  have,  unluckily,  no  details,  but 
which  are  mainly  landscapes.  Such  was  the 
simple,  but  snug  and,  on  the  whole,  elegant  fur- 
niture of  a  celebrated  writer  in  1710. 

Now  we  shall  betake  ourselves,  in  the  slow, 
picturesque  way  that  Mme.  de  Sevigne  will  de- 
scribe later,  to  the  borders  of  Brittany  and  Maine, 
and  by  the  help  of  some  "  time  machine  "  carry 
ourselves  fifty  years  backwards ;  and  here  we  are 
at  the  Chateau  de  Vitre,  the  home  of  the  Due 
de  la  Tremoille.  We  shall  not  follow  at  every 
step  the  official  charged  with  the  duty  of  making 
an  inventory  of  the  furniture,  for  the  mansion, 
which  is  one  of  the  big  seats  of  the  province, 
contains  more  than  eighty  halls,  chambers, 
cabinets  and  clothes-closets  or  wardrobes.  Here 
the  furnishing  has  some  claim  to  pomp  and 
splendour ;  in  Paris  it  would  perhaps  bring  a 
pitying  smile  to  the  faces  of  smart  society,  but 
at  Vitre  it  is  truly  princely. 

The  important  apartments  are  the  "great 
chamber  of  Monseigneur,"  the  "great  chamber 
of  Madame,"  and  the  "little  chamber  of 
Madame."  The  first  two  are  of  imposing 
dimensions,  and  Monseigneur's  is  hung  with  a 
high-warp  tapestry  with  figures,  the  Story  of 
Tonally  and  embellished  with  two  pictures  of 
religious  subjects.  A  large  Turkey  '  carpet  covers 
the  middle  of  the  paved  floor ;  the  bed  is  all  in 

I  In    the  seventeenth    century  this   name  was  given  indis- 
criminately to  all  Oriental  carpets. 


INTRODUCTION  xlx 

crimson  damask  and  taffeta  ;  the  seats  (two  arm- 
chairs, two  without  arms,  and  six  folding  stools) 
and  the  screen  display  the  same  damask,  a  small 
day-bed  is  in  blue  damask.  Two  folding  screens, 
each  of  six  "  doors,"  of  red  serge  with  gilt  nails, 
struggle  as  best  they  can  against  the  draughts ; 
two  candlestick-carrying  round  tables  are  of 
wood,  painted  blue,  with  gilding.  The  two 
tables  are  oak,  and  very  plain. 

Madame's  great  chamber  is  much  like  Mon- 
seigneur's :  tapestry  hangings  in  nine  sections, 
eight  of  which  represent  fountains  and  land- 
scapes, and  the  ninth  the  labours  of  Hercules  ; 
a  Turkey  carpet  on  the  floor ;  a  great  bed  of 
crimson  damask  and  velvet  ;  two  chairs  with 
arms,  a  small  arm-chair,^  four  chairs  without  arms 
and  six  folding  stools  in  the  same  velvet  ;  two 
bench  seats,  their  wood  painted  red,  and  with 
loose  covers  of  a  serge  of  the  same  colour.  Here 
there  are  three  tables,  one  of  which  is  ebony  with 
four  pillar  legs ;  two  gueridons  or  candle-holders 
are  painted  the  colour  of  ebony.  A  large  ebony 
cabinet  opens  with  two  "windows"  and  two 
''  layettes,"  as  drawers  are  still  called.  The 
mirror  is  framed  in  ebony  and  hung  on  red  silk 
cords.  In  the  huge  funnelled  fireplace  there  are 
great  fire-dogs  w'th  brass  knobs.  It  is  not,  we 
must  confess,  a  very  feminine  room  :   we  are  still 

I  What  is  the  difference  between  a  chaise  a  bras  and  afautenil  f 
About  1660  the  fauteuil  is  a  seat  with  arms  and  a  low  back,  as  in 
the  time  of  Louis  XIII,  and  doubtless  dating  from  that  time, 
while  the  chaise  a  bras  has  a  high  back.  Presently  all  chairs 
with  arms  will  be  called  arm-chairs. 


XX  INTRODUCTION 

very  close  to  the  somewhat  sullen  austerity  of 
the  Louis  XIII  style. 

Madame's  little  chamber,  the  one  she  really 
lives  in,  is  more  engagingly  attractive.  Its 
hangings  are  a  fresh  brocatclle  with  a  blue  ground 
and  fawn-coloured  flowers  "  with  white  edges  " ; 
the  draperies  of  the  bed  are  white  velvet  Vvdth 
little  blue  checks,  lined  with  white  taffeta,  and 
with  gold  and  silver  fringes ;  four  chairs  and  six 
folding  stools  are  of  the  same  velvet,  and  there  is 
a  large  chair  with  arms  mounted  on  wheels  for 
hours  when  Madame  is  ailing.  The  satin  screen 
shows  the  same  colours  as  the  hangings,  fawn- 
coloured  flowers  on  a  blue  ground,  two  tall 
blue  screens  with  six  leaves  allow  an  intimate 
corner  to  be  arranged  for  reading,  embroidery, 
or  gossip  with  the  ladies  of  Vitre,  Mile.  duPlessis, 
that  funny  Mile,  de  Kerbone  and  that  comical 
Mile,  de  Kerquoison,  whom  roguish  Mme.  de 
Sevigne  ^  calls  Kerborgne  and  Croque-Oison,  or 
even  at  times  the  amiable  Marquise  herself. 

The  chamber  is  not  very  small,  for  it  contains 
three  tables  besides,  one  of  which  is  "  folded  in 
triangle  shape,"  and  a  large  coffer  of  red  leather, 
decorated  with  gilt  nails. 

In  the  other  rooms,  the  ''''  cahhiet  aiix  devises 
de  Madame,^^  the  cabinet  of  Monseigneur's 
portraits,  the  "  cabinet  of  M.  Le  Blancq,  Mon- 
seigneur's secretary,"  there  are  some  pieces  of 
furniture  that  deserve  a  glance ;  a  mirror  framed 

I  Her  chateau  des  Rochers  is  a  league  and  a  half  from  Vitre; 
and  she  even  has  a  house  in  Vitre  itself,  the  "  Tour  de  Vitr6." 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

in  ebony  and  seven  silver  plaques  ;  a  "  semi- 
circular seat  serving  as  a  day-bed,  covered  in 
green  mocade*  with  its  head-piece  in  the  same 
mocade,''  which  is  assuredlv  nothing  else  than, 
sixty  years  before  its  time,  the  "  gondola  "  chaise- 
longue  of  the  following  century ;  many  painted 
pieces,  a  green  table,  a  red  cupboard,  a  green 
cupboard,  a  little  dresser  of  painted  wood  with 
yellow  mouldings,  a  straw  chair,  the  wooden  part 
of  which  is  green.  Lastly,  in  the  "  new  cham- 
ber," the  emmeiihhment*  of  mourning:  the 
bed  of  black  velvet,  damask  and  tafTeta,  which  is 
brought  into  one  or  other  of  the  great  chambers 
when  a  death  in  the  family  calls  for  "draping" 
as  a  sign  of  grief. 

Let  us  take  another  journey  across  space  and 
time.  We  are  now  in  1 701,  in  Languedoc,  in 
the  Chateau  de  Brisis,  which  belongs  to  the 
Vicomte  d'Herail  de  Brisis,  who  has  just  died. 
He  was  one  of  those  small  country  squires  that 
make  up  almost  the  whole  mass  of  the  French 
nobility  and  are  the  soUd  backbone  of  the  King's 
armies.  It  often  happens  that  they  are  poorer 
than  many  a  farmer,  and  that  they  are  driven  to 
sell  their  last  patch  of  land  and  become  labourers 
or  vine  dressers  in  others'  service — simple  villeins. 
The  Herails  de  Brisis  are  far  from  such  extremity  ; 
they  represent  pretty  fairly  the  average  pro- 
vincial gentlefolk.  And  they  are  not  mere 
bucolic  gentry,  for  one  room  in  the  mansion  is 
entitled  "'the  chamber  in  which  the  gentlemen 
of  the  house  pursue  their  studies." 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

Maitre  Joseph  Delacroix,  doctor  of  law,  lawyer 
and  commissary  deputed  by  the  Seneschal  of 
Nimes,  makes  out  the  inventory  of  the  deceased 
man's  property.  He  finds  in  the  kitchen  cup- 
board— M.  d'Herail  had  no  other  dining-room — 
some  small  pieces  of  silver  :  a  ewer  with  its  basin, 
six  forks,  six  spoons,  two  small  salt  cellars  and 
two  candlesticks.  But  the  stable  is  not  too  well 
equipped :  one  black  horse  and  an  old  one-eyed 
mule.  Of  the  twelve  rooms  of  the  dwelling 
house  the  hall,  the  small  hall,  the  chambers  and 
cabinets,  two  only  are  equipped  with  hangings, 
one  with  old  bergame,  the  other  with  ligature  ;  ^ 
the  seven  beds  are  draped  merely  with  serge,  red 
or  green  or  yellow,  or  sealing  wax  colour ;  the 
seats  are  comparatively  numerous,  as  is  always 
the  case  in  these  country  homes :  there  are  over 
a  hundred,  but  not  an  arm-chair  among  them. 
More  than  half  of  these  chairs  are  all  wood  with 
no  other  trimmings ;  eighteen  are  straw  chairs, 
twenty-one  are  covered  with  moquette,  and  only 
six  of  them  with  "  old  needlework  tapestry." 
There  are  eleven  small  tables,  some  walnut,  the 
others  deal,  or  painted  black.  Four  of  those 
great  cupboards  that  have  been  made  in  the 
provinces  for  some  two  score  years,  and  which 
in  the  South  of  France  are  known  as  wardrobes, 
hold  clothes  and  linen  ;  they  are  made  of  chest- 
nut. Let  us  add  two  small  cupboards  of  greater 
antiquity,  an  old    dresser,  an    old    cabinet  and — 

I  A  common  stuff,  generally  in  a  pattern  of  small  checks, 
woven  of  wool  and  linen  thread. 


INTRODUCTION         xxiii 

the  only  items  that  belong  to  a  simple  luxury — 
two  gueridons,  a  small  cabinet  with  drawers,  a 
small  mirror  and  a  few  "little  curios  by  way  of 
ornaments."  That  is  all.  Now  Maitre  Joseph 
Delacroix  has  forgotten  nothing,  seeing  that 
having  opened  the  door  of  a  little  room  he  went 
so  far  as  to  dictate  to  his  clerk  the  following  : 
"  Item.  Another  chamber  at  the  side — apples, 
fresh  chestnuts  and  onions." 

And  the  plain  country  folk  .  .  .  what  furni- 
ture did  they  have  under  Louis  XIV?  The 
answer  is  simple:  they  had,  in  a  manner  of 
speaking,  none  at  all.  Is  this,  as  we  are  almost 
always  told  in  books,  through  their  extreme 
poverty  and  distress  ?  The  point  deserves  a  little 
examination.  We  most  frequently  form  our 
opinion  of  the  peasants'  condition  in  the  seven- 
teenth century  from  three  kinds  of  documentary 
evidence,  namely,  from  pictorial  documents, 
which  are  practically  confined  to  four  or  five 
pictures  by  the  brotheis  Le  Nain,  as  many  by 
Sebastian  Bourdon,  and  certain  engravings  of 
Callot;  secondly,  from  certain  literary  texts, 
which  are  always  the  same.  La  Fontaine's  Death 
and  the  Woodman^  the  celebrated  phrase  of  La 
Bruyere  about  "  certain  wild  animals,  male  and 
female,  scattered  about  the  countryside,"  and  a 
letter  or  two  of  Gui  Patin  ;  and  lastly,  from  more 
precise  documents  in  the  shape  of  the  adminis- 
trative correspondence  of  the  intendants  with 
the  Comptrollers-General,  the  Memorandum  of 
the  King's  Commissaries  on  the  distress  of  the 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION 

people^    the   Detail   de    la    France    by    Bois- 
Guillebert,  and  Vauban's  Dime  royale. 

These  last  named  sources  of  information  have 
a  quite  different  value  from  the  first.  The  Le 
Nains  are  intensely  and  admirably  sincere  and 
honest,  but  the  peasant  of  their  depicting  is  the 
peasant  of  a  province  that  had  been  terribly 
trampled  over  by  the  men  of  war  for  several 
generations,  and  their  pictures  are  prior  to  1648. 
In  any  case,  the  famous  Repas  des  paysans  in 
the  Louvre  ^  shows  us  two  beggars  who  are 
assuredly  very  wretchedly  poor,  but  the  vine- 
dressers who  are  offering  them  the  bread  and 
wine  of  hospitality  are  very  comfortably  off  :  they 
have  a  well  furnished  bed,  quite  "bourgeois "  in 
style  and  standard,  a  window  with  little  leaded 
panes  that  is  little  less  than  a  luxury  article,  and 
their  son  is  playing  the  violin.  Callot  and 
Bourdon  are  the  least  veracious  of  artists,  and 
Callot  gives  us  no  information  except  for  the 
period  of  Louis  XIII.  La  Fontaine  does  not 
pretend  to  put  forward  his  woodman  as  a  type 
of  the  peasant  of  France.  La  Bruyere's  passage 
is  admirable  in  its  eloquence,  and  rivals  in  beauty 
Millet's  Man  with  the  Hoe,  but  must  be  taken 
cautiously  just  because  it  is  so  intent  on  its 
effect.  The  King's  Commissaries,  d'Aguesseau 
and  d'Ormesson,  bear  valuable  testimony  to  the 
horrible  distress  that  reigned  at  the  moment  of 
their  enquiry  (1687)  through  Maine  and  the 
Orleans  country,  but  a  close  reading  will  show 

I  In  the  La  Caze  room. 


INTRODUCTION  xxv 

that  they  are  describing  a  state  of  poverty  that 
has  only  been  in  existence  for  a  very  little  while. 
As  for  the  testimony  of  that  supremely  honest 
fellow  de  Vauban,  in  1707,  we  have  to  acknow- 
ledge that  it  is  most  afflicting. 

But  there  is  in  existence  a  whole  category  of 
documents  still  more  unexceptionable — the  in- 
ventories from  which  we  have  already  drawn  so 
largely.  If  we  run  through  these  we  find  quite 
a  different  face  on  the  matter.  From  these  we 
discover,  not  without  some  astonishment,  from 
one  end  of  the  realm  to  the  other,  a  very  large 
number  of  peasant  families  living,  if  not  in 
affluence,  at  least  in  a  condition  far  removed 
from  indigence  ;  and  this  more  markedly  at  the 
close  of  the  reign,  in  spite  of  the  disastrous  wars, 
the  passage  of  troops  to  and  fro,  the  continual 
levies  of  men  and  of  taxes,  the  times  of  dearth, 
the  dreadful  winter  of  1709.  This  fact  is 
especially  striking  if  we  do  not  lose  sight  of  the 
extreme  simplicity  of  manners  prevailing  at  this 
period,  except  in  the  very  highest  classes  of 
society.  The  peasant  was  to  grow  rich  under 
Louis  XV  especially,  but  he  had  begun  already 
in  the  middle  of  the  preceding  reign. 

Labourers  and  vine  dressers  have  a  little  pewter 
ware,  and  even  a  silver  cup  to  relish  their  wine; 
they  have  linen,  sometimes  in  great  store ;  their 
women  spend  comparatively  lavishly  on  their 
toilette.  They  very  often  have  a  "  skirt  of  violet 
serge  with  a  bodice  of  red-flowered  satin,  with 
its  sleeves  of   red  serge,"   a  "skirt   of  red  cloth 


xxvi  INTRODUCTION 

with  a  bodice  of  brocade  "  or  of  damask.  The 
wife  of  a  labourer  in  Champagne  has  in  her  chest : 
"  first,  a  skirt  of  purple  serge  with  bodice  of  orange 
damask,  trimmed  with  guipure  and  silk  lace  ; 
second,  a  skirt  of  fustian  with  its  bodice  of  green- 
flowered  damask,  \^dth  two  ribbons  for  shoulder 
straps ;  third,  another  petticoat  of  red  London 
serge,  with  bodice  of  orange  damask  trimmed  with 
guipure  below  and  lace  above."  We  are  very  far 
removed  here  from  the  rags  that  draw  tears  of 
grief  and  pity  from  historians  such  as  Michelet. 

These  contradictions  can  be  reconciled.  At 
this  period,  when  the  circulation  of  wealth  is  so 
sluggish,  one  province  may  very  well  be  suffering 
from  extreme  scarcity  while  another  is  enjoying 
a  certain  prosperity ;  and  passing  causes — a  bitter 
winter,  a  drought,  a  cattle  plague — may  bring 
about  a  few  years  of  famine ;  but  from  year  to 
year,  good  or  bad,  Jacques  Bonhomme's  comfort 
goes  on  increasing  little  by  little. 

Certainly  it  is  not  by  the  possession  of  furniture 
somewhat  pleasing  to  the  eye,  or  even  moderately 
convenient  that  this  humble  ease  of  circumstances 
is  displayed.  The  peasant  has  a  coffer  or  two, 
sometimes  iron  bound  and  with  lock  and  key, 
sometimes  of  leather  studded  with  nails ;  a  cup- 
board with  two  doors ;  inarchepieds  or  steps  to 
his  bed  that  serve  as  chests,  in  which  he  stows 
away  his  clothes ;  benches  or  rude  stools  for  the 
only  seats ;  no  tables  :  a  table  is  improvised  at 
need  by  fixing  a  plank  on  two  trestles,  or  on 
casks  cut  in  two  and  turned   over,  or  on  stools. 


INTRODUCTION         xxvii 

A  luxury  gift  he  will  make  to  his  wife  after  a  fine 
harvest,  and  if  the  tax  collector  has  not  been  too 
greedy,  is  a  small  mirror  framed  in  black  wood, 
or  a  religious  wood  engraving  all  brightened  up 
with  fine  colours.  But  for  the  most  part  he 
behaves  like  everybody  else,  clown  or  gentleman, 
like  the  King  himself  at  Versailles ;  where 
furniture  is  concerned  everything  else  is  sacrificed 
to  the  bed.  Here  is  what  we  find  in  a  labourer's 
house  in  1716,  "a  tall  pillared  bed,  with  eight 
pieces  of  green  serge  with  silk  fringes  and 
mollets  " ;  with  a  peasant  of  Nogent-sur-Marne 
in  1672,  "a  coverlet  of  red  ratine  trimmed  with 
silk  lace  and  bordered  with  silk,"  etc. 

The  very  precise  and  detailed  inventory  of  the 
goods  of  a  village  dame  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Paris,  a  widow  at  Issy,  in  1665,  is  interesting  to 
analyse.  At  her  death  her  furniture  comprised 
an  oaken  kneading  trough,  an  oak  chest  with 
lock  and  key ;  a  bed  with  a  "  custode  ^  and  bonnes 
graces,''''  four  straw  chairs ;  "  a  middle-sized 
mirror  with  black  frame."  The  whole  is  valued 
at  eighty-eight  livres,  fifty-five  for  the  bed  by 
itself.  The  household  linen  is  worth  twenty-one 
livres ;  the  body  linen  and  clothes  ninety-eight 
livres ;  and  household  utensils  come  to  fifty-five 
livres.  We  must  not  be  astonished  at  these 
modest  sums :  let  us  not  forget  that  Boileau's 
magnificent  bed  which  we  have  described  was 
only  set  down  at  eighty  livres. 

From  this  glance  into  the  chateaux,  houses 
I  Curtains. 


xxviii        INTRODUCTION 

and  cottages  of  olden  days  we  can  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  man  of  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  as  a  general  rule,  takes 
little  thought  for  the  beauty  or  convenience  of 
the  articles  that  surround  his  private  life — the 
famous  state  bed  being  a  matter  of  vanity — and 
that  he  assigns  to  his  furniture  a  very  inferior 
share  in  his  budget  of  expenses  even  as  he  does 
in  his  pre-occupations,  and  that  what  he  is  above 
all  susceptible  to  is  the  beauty  of  fabrics.  We 
have,  in  short,  met  with  few  simple  pieces  of 
furniture  that  can  be  declared  to  be  of  the 
Louis  XIV  style.  And  as  for  peasant  furniture, 
we  have  either  seen  none,  or  it  was  so  coarsely 
and  rudely  made  of  ill-planed  planks  roughly 
knocked  together  that  before  long  it  served  for 
firewood.  Are  we  then  to  stop  at  this  point, 
and  refrain  from  writing  this  little  book,  which, 
in  talking  of  Louis  XIV  furniture,  sets  before 
itself  the  aim,  most  modest  and  overweening  at 
the  same  time,  to  be  practical  and  to  leave  on 
one  side  the  furniture  of  museums  and  of  the 
mansions  of  multi-millionaires  ?  No,  indeed,  for 
if  we  but  search  a  little  we  still  find  pieces  of 
furniture — except  perhaps  tables — that  are  simple 
and  that  really  possess  the  characteristics  of  this 
style  ;  and  as  Louis  XIV  pieces  do  not  at  this 
moment  enjoy  the  amazing  vogue  which  every- 
thing Louis  XV  and  Louis  XVI  now  has,  it  is 
often  possible  to  acquire  them  more  cheaply, 
though  they  are  much  more  rare.  And  then  we 
are  to  discuss  the  Regency  style  :  now,  the  first 


INTRODUCTION  xxix 

quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  the  period 
in  which  comfort  is  born,  when  dwelHngs,  hke 
manners,  begin  to  be  very  like  our  own ;  when, 
in  short,  the  manufacture  of  "  bourgeois " 
furniture  suddenly  spreads  and  develops  through- 
out the  whole  kingdom.^ 

I  We  must  here  express  our  sincere  gratitude  to  the  amateurs 
and  the  directors  of  museums  who  have  been  so  kind  as  to 
permit  us  to  reproduce  the  furniture  in  their  possession  or  under 
their  care :  Mesdames  Dumoulin,  Dupuy,  Egan,  de  Flandreysy, 
Moutet ;  Baron  de  la  Chaise,  Messieurs  Boulley,  Boymier,  de 
Brugiere  de  Belrieu,  Ceresole,  Delafosse  Desportes,  Ducros, 
Fidelin,  Guillonet  Marquis  d'Isoard,  Abel  and  Edouard  Jay, 
Julien,  Laregnere,  Loreilhe,  Dr.  Moog,  Pascaud,  Philippe,  Prevel, 
Tastemain,  Zaphiropoulo ;  the  Directors  of  the  Musee  des  Arts 
Decoratifs  and  the  Carnavalet  Museum,  in  Paris,  and  the 
Directors  of  the  MuHeums  at  Metz,  Mulhouse,  Nancy,  Strasbourg, 
Vieux  Honfleur  and  Vieux  Rouen. 


PRINCIPAL  AUTHORITIES 

Bayard,  ^mile:  "  Le  Style  Louis  IV."    Paris  (n.d.) 

"Les  Styles  Regenceet  Louis  XV."  Paris  (n.d.) 

BOULENGER,  JACQUES:  *•  L'Ameublement  frangais  au  grand 
siecle."    London.  1913. 

Champeaux,  Alfred  de:  "Le  Meuble"  (Bibliotheque  de 
I'Enseignement  des  Beaux-Arts).    (Vol.  IL) 

GuiFFREY,  Jules:  "Artistes  parisiens  du  XVI F  et  du  XVIIP 
siecle  (donations,  contrats,  testaments,  inventaires)."  Paris, 
1915. 

Havard,  Henri:  Les  Boulle,  Paris,  1893,  " Dictionnaire  de 
I'Ameublement  et  de  la  Decoration."    Paris  (n.d.) 

DE  Mely  ET  Bishop  :  "  Bibliographie  generale  des  Inventaires 
imprimes."    Paris,  1895. 

Molinier,  Emile  :  "  Histoire  generale  des  Arts  appliques  a 
I'Industrie."    Paris  (n.d.)    (Vol.  II.) 


XXXI 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

INTRODUCTION  v 

PRINCIPAL  AUTHORITIES  xxxi 

LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS  xxxv 

PART  I 

HISTORICAL  SKETCH  OF  THE  TWO  STYLES  I 

PART  II 

THE  LOUIS  XIV  STYLE  31 
I.  CHARACTERISTICS  AND  TECHNIQUE  OF 

THE  STYLE  33 

II.  PANELLED  FURNITURE,  BEDS  AND  TABLES  64 

III.  SEATS  88 
PART  III 

THE  REGENCY  STYLE  1 13 

INDEX  143 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 

FIG.  PLATE 

1.  Cupboard  Door,  Oak   ")  j 

2.  Oak  Door  Leaf  j 

3.  Small  Clipboard  in  hvo  parts,  in  Oak  2 

4.  Walnut  Cupboard  with  one  Door  and  a  Drawer,  from  the 

Sou  th-ic'cs t  of  Fra  ncc  3 

5.  Cupboard  with  one  Door  and  neutral  Panels  at  the  sides, 

in  Walnut,  from  the  South-west  4 

6.  Norman  Cupboard,  Oak  5 

7.  Large  Cupboard  ivith  elaborate  Cornice,  in  Walnut,  from 

the  South-west  6 

8.  Cupboard  front  Saintonge,  ivith  Carved  Panels,  in  Oak  7 

9.  Large  Walnut  Cupboard,  with  elaborate  Mouldings,  from 

the  South-west  8 

10.  Very  large  Cupboard  with  arched  Pediment,  in  Walnut,  end 

of  the  style.     From  the  South-ivest  9 

11.  Lorraine  Cupboard  in  Oak,  ivith  Medallions,  ornamented 

ivith  Marquetry  Stars  10 

12.  Oak  Alsatian  Buffet  in  two  sections,  with  arched  Pediment  II 

13.  Very  large    Dresser-sidcboard-commode,  from    Lorraine, 

in  Cherrywood  12 

14.  Walnut  Under-cupboard  13 

15.  Coffer  set  on  a  Table  with  a  Drawer,  from  Normandy  ")  ^ 

16.  Coffer  in  Pigskin  studded  -with,  nails  ) 

17.  Marquetry  Commode  ivith  Gilt  Bronses  15 

18.  Marquetry  Commode  in  the  style  of  the  Low  Countries  I6 

19.  Commode  veneered  witli  Violet-wood  17 

20.  Bed  with  curved  Dossier  and  Cantonnicrcs  I8 

21.  Table  with  Baluster  Legs,  natural  Oak  19 

22.  Small  Table  ivith  Console  Legs,  in  Gilt  Wood  20 

23.  Small  Table  with  Turned  Baluster  Legs     |  2i 

24.  Table  ivith  Twisted  Legs,  from  Normandy  > 

25.  Small  RusticTablewiihConsoleor" Doe's  Foot"  Legs     |  ^2 

26.  Small  Table  with  Bracket-shaped  Legs,  in  Cherrywood  j 

27.  Large  Bureau  ivith  eight  Turned  Baluster  Legs  and  nu- 

merous Drawers  23 

28.  Simple  Arm-chair  with  Turned  Baluster  Legs  24 

29.  Gilt  Wood  Arm-chair,  covered  with  Green  and  Gold  Brocade  25 

30.  Arm-chair  of  natural  Walnut  covered  ivith  RedGenoa  Velvet  26 

31.  Arm-chair  of  Gilded  and  Painted  Wood  covered  with  White 

and  Silver  Brocade  2/ 


xxxvi     LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 

FIG.  PLATE 

32.  Arm-chair    with    Console-shaped      Legs    with     beautiful 

Mouldings  28 

33.  Confessional-shaped  Easy  Chair,  covered  with  Tapestry  in 

Big  and  Small  Stitch  29 

34.  Chair  of  "  Brackef'-Shaped  Type      ^ 

35.  Simple  Arm-chair  of  Turned  Wood  >  30 

36.  Arm-chair  of  the  "  Bracket "  Shape  j 

37.  Chair  from  the  South-west,  modern  Leather^  ,. 

38.  Chair  from  Auvergnewitli  Baluster  Legs        J  ^ 

39.  Cane  Chair  with  Legs  en  facade  "J 

40.  Wooden  Chair  from  Lorraine                                                f  ,- 

41.  Arm-chair  made  of  Wood.     Normandy,   with   Flemish^  ^ 

Influence  ) 

42.  Door  Leaf,  Oak   ")  , 

43.  Door  Leaf  Oak  J  ^^ 

44.  Provenfal  Cupboard  with  Cabriolet  Feet,  in  Walnut  34 

45.  Norman  Cupboard  with  Claw  Feet,  in  Oak  35 

46.  Lorraine  Cupboard  with  Cabriolet  Feet,  in  Oak  36 

47.  Alsatian   Buffet  in   two  Sections,   with   small   Marquetry 

Panels  37 

48.  Alsatian  Buffet  in  two  Sections,  in  Oak  38 

49.  Large    Sidcboard-dresser-conimodc,    from    Lorraine,  with 

Inlaid  Work  39 

50.  Norman  Dresser-sideboard  in  Oak  40 

51.  Small  Dresser-sideboard,  front  Lorraine,  made  of  Oak  41 

52.  Coffer,  from  Lorraine,  made  of  Cherrywood  '\ 

53.  Coffer  from  the  Hautes-Vosges,with  the  Hollow  Carving  >^  42 

picked  out  in  Paint  j 

54.  Regency  Commode  veneered  with  Rosewood  43 

55.  Simple  Commode  in  Rosewood  Veneer  44 
56  and  57-  Case  Clocks  from  Lorraine,  in  Oak  45 

58.  Small  Table  with  Doe's  Foot  Legs,  Sunk  Top  and  Incised 

Decoration  46 

59.  Small  Table  with  Doe's  Foot  Legs  47 

60.  Bed  with  low  Posts  in  Gilded  Wood  48 

61.  Arm-chair  with  Curved  Top  to  Back'i  .q 

62.  Arm-chair  with  the  Arms  set  back    )  ^^ 

63.  Arm-chair  of  "  Bracket"  type  with  Arms  not  set  back  ")  .^ 

64.  Arm-chair  of  the  same  type  with  Arms  set  back              '  ^ 


65.  Arm-chair  with  Arm-Pads  and  visible  Frieze  of  Wood  ) 


51 


66.  Arm-chair  of''  Bracket"  type  with  Arm-Pads 

67  and  68.  Chair  and  Arm-chair  with   Doe's  Foot  Legs  and 

Stretchers  52 

69  and  70.  Arm-chairs  with  Arms  very  curved  and  without 

Stretchers  53 

71.  Tall  Chair  in  natural  Wood  covered  with  Brochc  Silk       "^ 

72.  Chair  in  natural  Wood  covered  with  White  and  Silver  ^      54 

Brocade  j 


LIST    OF  ILLUSTRATIONS     xxxvii 


FIG. 

73- 
74- 

75- 
76. 

77- 
78. 

79- 
80. 
8i. 
82. 

83. 
84. 


PLATE 

Large  "Confessional"  Armchair  55 
Bcrgerc-aim-clmir,    Confessional  shape,  with    the    Wood 

showing  56 

Large  Sofa  with  eight  Legs,  natural  Walnut  57 

Cane  Sofa  with  its' Mattress  Cushion,  of  Beechwood  58 

Cane  Chair  with  Legs  en  facade             |  cq 

Cane  Arm-chair  with  Oblique-set  Legs  J  ^ 
Cane  Chair  icith  exaggerated  Doe's  Foot  Legs  "^ 

Straw  Chair  from  Auvergne                                 >  60 
Cane  Chair  with  Stretchers                                  J 

Plain  Bench  made  of  Beech  6I 

Wall  Bench,  Walnut,  covered  with  Crimson  Damask  62 
Stool  {Tabouret  or  Placet)  in  natural  Walnut,  covered  with 

Brochc  Silk  63 
Screen,  mounted  in  natural  Walnut,  icith  Panel  of  Silver- 
grey  Damask  64 


PART  ONE  :    THE  HISTORY 
OF  THE  TWO  STYLES 

In  the  decorative  arts  the  period  of  Louis  XIII 
had  been  one  of  the  retreat  of  French  taste 
before  the  influence  of  the  Northern  countries. 
Cabinets  of  ebony  and  of  marquetry  had  been 
imported  from  the  Low  Countries  and  from 
Germany ;  sumptuous  chairs  of  ornate  leather 
for  the  most  part  came  from  Spain  ;  in  France 
itself  every  form  of  ornamentation  had  grow^n 
heavy  in  the  Flemish  fashion.  Then  came  the 
reign  of  Mazarin,  and  with  it  a  regular  Italian 
invasion.  In  short,  when  Louis  XIV  took  the 
power  into  his  own  hands,  furniture  was  essen- 
tially cosmopohtan,  and  we  might  declare  that  his 
long  reign  was,  in  this  respect,  merely  one 
continuous  effort  of  the  French  spirit  to 
ehminate  the  elements  in  these  importations 
from  abroad  that  were  discordant  with  the 
traditional  genius  of  the  race,  which  loved 
measure,  clarity,  sober  elegance,  an  effort  also  to 
assimilate  what  was  not  incompatible  with  itself. 
This  work  of  elimination  and  assimilation  was 
not  fully  accomplished  until  the  days  of  the 
Regency.  It  was  not  in  any  case  a  phenomenon 
peculiar  to  the  art  of  house  furnishing,  or  even 
the  applied  arts  in  general  ;  we  can  trace  the 
same  movement  of  evolution  in  sculpture,  from 

I 

A 


2       LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

Simon  Guillain,-'-  for  example,  to  Coysevox  in  the 
latter  years  of  his  long  career,  or  from 
Franqueville  the  Italiajiizer  to  Robert  le 
Lorrain,  whose  Horses  of  the  Sun,  at  the  hotel 
de  Rohan,  are  a  masterpiece,  preposterous  indeed, 
but  so  brilliantly  French  ! 

Signor  Giulio  Mazarini  was  a  great  lover  of 
pictures,  sculpture,  and  every  kind  of  work  of 
art.  In  the  real  palace  that  Fran9ois  Mansard 
had  built  on  for  him  to  the  hotel  Tubeuf,  and 
which  the  painters  Grimaldi  of  Bologna  and 
Romanelli  of  Rome  had  decorated  for  him,  he 
brought  together,  by  dint  of  the  millions  that 
cost  him  little  or  nothing,  the  richest  collection 
that  had  as  yet  been  seen  in  France,  pictures, 
statues,  furniture,  fabrics,  goldsmith's  work, 
jewels,  gems  and  medallions.^  Nearly  everything 
came  from  Italy  :    if  his  heart,  as  he  pretended, 

1  When  he  made  the  exquisite  statue  of  the  Duchess  of 
Burgundy  as  Diana. 

2  The  inventory  of  this  almost  unbelievable  accumulation  of 
riches  was  drawn  up  in  1653  by  a  little  clerk  from  Rheims,  who 
looked  after  the  cardinal's  private  affairs,  and  whose  name  was 
Jean  Baptiste  Colbert;  its  publication  we  owe  to  the  Due 
d'Aumale.  The  enumeration  is  still  incomplete,  as  Mazarin  had 
seven  years  longer  to  live.  To  the  cardinal'spassionfor  his  works 
of  art  we  have  a  very  curious  testimony  from  Lomenie  de  Brienne. 
"One  day,"  he  writes  in  his  Mciiwires,  "I  was  walking  in  a 
gallery  in  the  Mazarin  palace,  when  I  heard  the  cardinal 
approaching;  I  knew  him  by  the  sound  of  his  slippers,  which  he 
was  shuffling  along  like  a  man  in  a  very  weak  condition  just 
recovering  from  a  serious  illness.  I  hid  behind  a  tapestry,  and 
heard  him  say:  'I  shall  have  to  leave  all  this  I'  He  halted  at 
every  step,  for  he  was  very  feeble  indeed  ;  and  turning  his  eyes 
to  the  object  that  was  nearest  his  gaze,  he  would  say  from  the 
depth  of  his  heart,  '  I  have  to  leave  all  this  I  '  and  turning  about, 
he  went  on,  'And  that  too !  I  shall  never  see  these  things  again, 
where  I  am  going  1 '  " 


A    MAZARIN    CABINET       3 

was  French  in  spite  of  his  language,  his  taste  had 
never  become  naturahzed.  The  hangings  and 
the  breadths  of  stuffs  were  Genoa  or  Milanese 
velvet,  or  Florentine  brocade.  The  tables  were 
Florence  stone ;  the  cabinets  were  the  stipi 
variously  bedecked  with  lapis,  amethyst,  cornelian 
gilt  bronze,  silver,  tortoise-shell  and  painted 
miniatures  that  were  made  by  the  craftsmen  of 
the  Grand  Dukes  of  Tuscany  ;  others,  inlaid  with 
ivory  and  mother  of  pearl  on  ebony,  came  from 
Naples ;  and  those  that  were  of  iron  repousse 
and  damascened  came  from  the  workrooms  of 
the  Milanese  armourers. 

Nevertheless,  some  pieces  were  of  Parisian 
make,  though  the  craftsmen  who  had  carried 
them  out  were  natives  of  the  Low  Countries  or 
of  Italy.  Among  them  was  Pierre  Golle,  whom 
the  cardinal  had  brought  from  Holland.  Here 
is  one  of  his  v/orks  :  "  a  cabinet  in  ebony,  out- 
lined with  pewter,  with  five  niches  between 
fourteen  little  marble  columns  with  capitals  in 
gilt  bronze.  In  the  middle  niche  a  figure  of 
Cardinal  Mazarin  under  a  pavilion,  and  in  the 
other  four  Minerva,  Painting,  Sculpture  and 
Astrology,  on  a  gallery  with  balusters,  under  four 
vases  and  two  figures  representing  Might  and 
Justice ;  and  the  King's  arms  over  the  pediment. 
This  cabinet  "  is  upheld  "  by  a  base  of  twelve 
thermes  bronzed  and  gilt  with  the  signs  of  the 
Zodiac."  Others  were  Domenico  Cucci,  the 
wood  carver,  and  Filippo  Cafheri,  the  founder  ot 
his  line,  both  summoned  from   Rome ;    and  also 


4      LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

the  mosaic  workers  in  hard  stones  and  lapidary- 
artists,  Ferdinando  and  Orazio  Migliorini, 
Giovanni  Gacetti  and  Branchi,  all  Tuscans. 

Foucquet  also  was  a  great  connoisseur  in  fine 
things,  but  with  a  taste  refined  in  a  different 
sense  from  that  of  the  Italian  Mazarin.  We 
know  that  Louis  XIV  and  Colbert,  where 
building  was  concerned,  were  only  his  imitators, 
since  it  was  he  who  had  managed,  in  order  to 
give  his  chateau  and  park  of  Vaux-le-Vicomte  a 
harmony  of  beauty  then  unique  in  the  whole 
world,^  to  bring  together  artists  like  the  architect 
Le  Vau,  the  gardeners  Le  Nostre  and  La 
Quintinie,  the  sculptor  Puget,  and  lastly,  the 
painter  Le  Brun,  to  whom  he  had  already 
entrusted  a  kind  of  supervision  of  all  works 
carried  out  for  him,  and  the  management  of  a 
tapestry  factory  at  Maincy.  Vaux,  says  Sainte- 
Beuve,  is  a  "  Versailles  in  anticipation." 

Mazarin  dies,  and  the  young  king  takes  the 
"helm  of  the  State"  with  a  firm  hand;  at  once 
Foucquet's  amazing  career  crumbles  to  dust  : 
the  adder  has  overcome  the  squirrel.^  Fully 
possessed  of  the  idea  that  noble  buildings  are  as 
essential  for  the  renown  of  a  great  monarch  as 
the  triumphs  of  Bellona  and  dazzling  love  affairs, 

1  We  are  not  forgetting  the  royal  chateau  of  Richelieu, 
now  destroyed.  But  it  appears  certain  that  for  unity  and 
harmony  of  beauty,  in  spite  of  a  certain  piled-up  heaviness  that 
keeps  Vaux  from  being  an  absolute  masterpiece,  taken  together 
Foucquet's  chateau  and  park  surpassed  Richelieu's. 

2  It  will  be  remembered  that  Foucquet's  emblem  was  a 
squirrel  (Jouqiict  in  old  French)  and  Colbert's  an  adder  (Latin 
coluber). 


THE    REIGN    OF    LE    BRUN    5 

and,  besides,  boldly  encouraged  in  this  path  hy 
Colbert,  Louis  XIV  decides  that  art  shall  be 
one  of  the  rays  of  his  crown  of  glory,  and  takes 
into  his  own  service  e7i  bloc  all  the  artists  that 
have  worked  for  the  first  minister  and  for  the 
Superintendent  of  Finance.-^ 

And  now  begins  the  despotic  sway  of  Le 
Brun  that  was  to  lie  heavily  for  a  quarter  of  a 
century  upon  all  French  art,  for  its  good  and 
for  evil  too.  Colbert,  who  understood  such 
things,  had  speedily  discovered  in  him  rare 
gifts  as  an  organizer  and  a  leader  of  men,  and 
proposed  him  to  the  sovereign  for  a  kind  of 
State  Secretary  of  Fine  Arts.  Now  we  see 
French  art  somewhat  like  a  well  regulated 
clock ;  the  central  spring  moves  a  first  wheel, 
which  engages  a  second,  and  so  on.  .  .  .  This 
hierarchy,  too,  is  universally  accepted  and  not 
merely  imposed  by  force  ;  Puget  alone,  in  the 
depths  of  his  native  Provence,  remains  to  some 
degree  independent.  Le  Brun  is  made  noble, 
he  becomes  sire  de  Thionville,  then  Chevalier  of 
the  Order  of  Saint  Michel,  First  Painter  to  the 
King,  Keeper  of  the  Pictures  and  Drawings  of 
the  King's  Cabinet,  Life  Chancellor  and  then 
Rector  in  perpetuity  to  the  Academy  of  Painting, 
which  gives  him  the  government  of  "great  art," 
and  Director  of  the  Manufacture  royaie  des 

I  To  lose  no  time  he  does  not  hesitate  even  to  buy  furniture 
at  the  sale  of  Foucquet's  effects.  That  is  how  the  Louvre  comes 
to  possess  a  round  table  of  gilded  wood,  upborne  by  figures  of 
children,  the  last  jetsam  of  the  early  splendours  of  Vaux-le- 
Vicomte.     It  shows  quite  pronounced  Italian  characteristics. 


6      LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

Meubles  de  ^a  cottronne,  that  is  to  say,  the 
Gobelins  factory,  which  brings  under  his  rod  all 
the  so-called  "minor"  arts. 

He  might  very  well  say,  "L'Art,  c'est  moi." 
It  must  be  quite  roundly  declared  that  there 
was  no  one  besides  Le  Brun  who  deserved  such 
a  pile  of  honours  and  powers.  In  spite  of  his 
defects,  which  are  serious — his  colour  is  poor  and 
vulgar,  his  drawing  round  and  commonplace — 
he  had  very  uncommon  artistic  gifts,  and  above 
all,  the  happy  combination  of  an  imagination 
sufficiently  vigorous  to  achieve  conceptions  of 
vast  scope  and  a  talent  for  detail  sufficient  to 
realise  them  in  the  most  meticulous  perfection. 
He  is  the  last  of  those  universal  artists,  of  which 
the  Renaissance  had  known  a  few,  capable  of 
conceiving  that  enormous  allegorical  poem  with 
innumerable  strophes  in  painting,  in  gilded 
stucco,  in  marbles  and  bronzes,  which  the  Mirror 
Gallery  at  Versailles  is  in  reality,  without  think- 
ing it  beneath  him  to  design  a  window  hasp ; 
sufficiently  clever  as  a  sculptor  for  such  men  as 
Coysevox  and  Girardon  to  find  it  natural  to 
follow  his  directions,  and  not  disdaining  to 
arrange  scenes  for  the  theatre.  "The  intervals 
of  spare  times  which  he  had  to  himself^  he 
employed  in  training  himself  in  all  the  talents 
that  are  related  to  the  art  of  design,  and  extend 
into  the  domains  of  architecture,  goldsmith's 
work,  cabinet-making,  and,  in  general,  everything 

I  Guillet  de   Saint-Georges  in  his  Mcmoires  incdits  sur  les 
membies  de  V Academic  de peinture. 


THE    EARLY    VERSAILLES    7 

that  deals  with  what  appertains  to  fine  build- 
ings." It  is  no  mark  of  a  mediocre  spirit  to 
have  had  so  wide  a  conception  of  art. 

Three  periods  can  be  distinguished  in  the 
duration  of  the  Louis  XIV  style,  and  in  this 
whole  time  there  is  a  uniformity  in  art  that  is 
too  complete ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  so  closely 
attached  to  the  royal  person  that  it  was 
inevitable  that  there  should  be  three  periods  of 
evolution  in  the  arts  in  general,  just  as  there 
were  three  periods  in  the  life  of  the  monarch. 

Under  Mazarin,  as  we  have  said,  there  is  a 
persistence  of  Flemish  influence,  but  a  preponder- 
ance of  Italian  taste  ;  nearly  all  the  artistic 
craftsmen  are  foreigners.  This  state  of  affairs 
cannot  come  to  an  end  suddenly ;  it  continues 
during  the  early  days  of  Louis  XIV's  personal 
rule,  the  more  naturally  seeing  that  the  taste  of 
this  young  prince,  "in  the  flower  of  his  age  and 
the  full  strength  of  his  passions,"  is  not  yet  very 
refined.  It  goes  on  almost  till  1675;  these  are 
the  days  of  Mile,  de  La  Valliere  and  the  goodly 
"  reign  "  of  Mme.  de  Montespan,  the  days  of  the 
carrousels^  ballets,  masquerades,  of  unceasing 
fetes ;  the  days  when  the  Louvre  works  have 
been  abandoned  and  the  first  buildings  begin  to 
rise  at  \'ersailles.  This  early  Versailles  was  much 
less  pompous  and  ceremonious  than  is  often 
imagined.  There  were  already  in  the  park  such 
sylvan  diversions  as  the  labyrinth  with  groups  of 
lead  figures,  painted  in  natural  colours  and 
representing  Aesop's  fables ;  hydraulic  diversions 


8       LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

like  the  grotto  of  Tethys  and  its  untimely  jets 
to  besprinkle  unwary  visitors,  to  the  great  glee 
of  the  initiate;  the  "royal  island"  or  "island 
of  love,"  in  the  midst  of  a  pond,  v^here  the  game 
is  to  get  to  it  by  skiff  without  being  drenched 
under  the  arching  jets  of  water  that  surround 
it ;  we  see  a  "ramasse  "  or  "roulette,"  a  kind  of 
switchback  on  which  La  Valliere's  lover  royally 
delights  to  make  his  timid  mistress  shriek  with 
affright.  All  this  is  imitated  from  the  gardens  of 
Germany  and  Italy. 

The  sun  climbs  to  the  zenith ;  after  this  gay 
morning  comes  a  resplendent  noon  of  fifteen 
years.  But  above  all,  the  years  between  the 
Peace  of  Nimuegen  and  the  English  revolution 
(1678- 1 688)  are  the  triumphal  years,  in  which 
the  monarch  of  the  lilies  sees  his  apotheosis  in 
his  own  lifetime.  When,  sitting  on  his  solid 
silver  throne  with  sixteen  million  livres  in 
diamonds  on  his  black  justaucorps  and  his  hat,  he 
receives  prostrate  and  humbled  ambassadors  at 
the  end  of  his  dazzling  mirror  gallery  ;  when  his 
coach  crosses  the  Place  des  Victoires  and  he 
beholds  the  statue  raised  in  his  honour  by 
Marechal  de  la  Feuillade  between  its  never 
extinguished  lanterns,  can  he  not  believe  himself  a 
god  upon  the  earth  ?  His  taste  is  finally  formed, 
henceforth  he  understands  the  grandeur  of 
simplicity,  he  loves  the  reasonable.  Let  us  take 
an  example ;  the  parterres  with  complicated 
meandering  runnels  of  water  have  been  replaced 
on  the  Versailles  terraces  with  noble  sheets  of  real 


DECAY    OF    LOUIS    XIV       9 

mirror  glass,  whose  great  bare  surface  is  so  fine 
under  the  heaven  they  reflect.  The  trivial 
diversions  of  the  park  have  been  destroyed  or 
abandoned.  The  Louis  XIV  art  now  reaches 
its  perfect  maturity,  foreign  elements  are  elimin- 
ated or  transformed  in  so  far  as  Is  possible  when 
a  Le  Brun  rules  everything.  ''^  Laissons^^ 
Boileau  has  just  said  In  his  Art  Poetique  : — 

"...  laissons  a  I'ltalie 
De  tous  ces  faux  brillants  I'eclatante  folic." 

The  poison  of  decadent  Italianism  is  still  at 
work  in  painting,  so  much  is  certain,  and  to  a 
considerable  degree  in  architecture,  although 
Hardouin-Mansart,  First  Architect  to  the  King 
in  1676,  is  a  good  Frenchman;  but  sculpture  is 
purged  of  It,  if  we  except  old  Puget,  and  already 
the  art  of  decoration  Is  almost  altogether 
national. 

After  1690  comes  decline  and  decay  for  the 
aging  King.  He  has  committed  irreparable 
blunders,  and  punishment  is  beginning ;  the 
liCague  of  Augsburg,  the  Great  Alliance  of 
Vienna,  the  Great  Alliance  of  the  Hague,  all 
Europe  rises  up  against  him.  He  has  lost 
Colbert ;  after  Colbert,  Louvols,  and  after 
Louvois,  Chamlllart !  He  has  lost  Conde, 
Turenne  and  Luxembourg ;  his  armies  have  now 
leaders  like  Tallard,  la  Feulllade,  Villeroy.  His 
couriers  riding  on  the  spur  from  the  North  or 
from  the  South  now  bring  only  tidings  of 
disaster :  defeat  at  Turin,  reverse  In  Spain,  rout 
at   Ramlllies,  the  loss   of  Lille  .  .  .  till   Villars 


lo    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

saves  France  and  honour.  Within  this  realm 
attacked  on  every  hand  are  famine  and  civil  wa.T. 
The  treasury  is  empty.  Death  strikes  and  strikes 
again  into  the  royal  family :  will  a  bastard  have 
to  be  set  on  the  throne  of  Saint-Louis  ?  After 
radiant  Montespan  comes  Maintenon,  the 
prudish,  cold-blooded  Maintenon,  the  dis- 
illusioned, the  eternally  bored.  \\'hile  she  plies 
her  needle  and  yawns,  tucked  away  in  her  famous 
niche,  Louis  sits  in  the  opposite  chimney-corner, 
with  his  gouty  leg  stretched  out  on  a  folding 
stool,  and  preserves  a  sullen  silence.  He  suffers 
from  his  decayed  teeth,  his  swollen  foot ;  he  has 
slept  badly,  for  the  bugs  have  harried  him  all 
night  in  his  hundred-thousand-crown  bed ; 
vapours  darken  his  brain,  for  in  spite  of  Fagon 
he  has  once  again  eaten  too  many  green  peas. 
And  he  broods  upon  his  violated  frontiers.  The 
Court  is  hanging  about  idly  in  attendance — 
gone  are  the  days  of  fetes  lit  by  five  thousand 
wax  tapers  .  .  .  and  it  seeks  distraction  as  it  can. 
There  is  at  the  end  of  this  reign  an  odd  mixture 
of  grossly  flaunted  cynicism  and  pretended 
religion.  Princesses  smoke  pipes  borrowed  from 
the  guardsmen  on  duty,  and  give  themselves  up 
to  bouts  of  excessive  drinking,  whose  consequences 
need  to  be  shrouded  up  in  darkness ;  but  the 
shadow  of  M.  Tartuffe  haunts  the  porch  of  the 
new  chapel. 

Meanwhile  French  art  pursues  its  destined 
path  of  glory.  Its  orbit  for  a  moment  has  coin- 
cided with  that  of  the  Sun-King,  but   does  not 


THE   CHANGING    STYLES     ii 

go  with  him  in  his  setting.  The  tyrant  Le  Brun 
dies  in  1690;  old  Mignard,  his  mortal  foe,  takes 
his  place  only  to  die  in  his  turn  four  years  later. 
It  is  possible  to  breathe  freely,  to  grow  eman- 
cipated. The  war  between  "  Poussini;tes  "  and 
"  Rubenistes  "  finally  ended  in  the  victory  of 
the  partisans  of  colour,  just  as  in  the  world  of 
letters  the  quarrel  between  the  Ancients  and  the 
Moderns  ended  in  the  victory  of  Perrault  and 
Fontenelle.  Rome  still  keeps  her  prestige,  but 
is  no  longer  in  artists'  eyes  the  holy  city  outside 
which  is  no  salvation ;  here  also  breathes  the 
Gallic  spirit — Rigaud  and  Largilliere  have  no- 
thing ultramontane  about  them.  That  delicious 
Susannah  in  the  Bath  by  Santerre,  how  purely 
French  it  is !  '  Francois  Desportes,  his  dogs  and 
his  game,  are  full  of  the  richest  and  most  living 
realism.  We  see  a  Tournieres  revive  genre 
painting  in  the  Dutch  manner,  a  Gillot,  painter 
of  burlesque  themes,  farces,  caprices  and 
"  grotesques,"  sets  Harlequin,  Mezzetin  and 
Silvia  gaily  a-frisk.  In  1699  Bon  Boulogne 
hangs  in  the  exhibition  of  the  Academic  de 
peinture  a  Sacrifice  of  Iphigenia  as  a  matter  of 
form,  but  also  2^  Jeunc  fillc  cherchant  les pieces 
a  line  autre !  These  two  girls  seem  to  us  to 
close  the  age  of  Poussin  and  Le  Brun  in  a  highly 
piquant  fashion. 

The  King  is  no  longer  the  artists'  sole  client. 
He  hardly  commissions  anything  now,  for  he  is 
poor.  Oh,  yes  :  he  is  commissioning  "paintings 
to    cover    the    nude    figures  on    the    Gobelins 


12     LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

tapestries."  The  Gobelins  factory  is  even  closed 
for  several  years  from  1694;  the  high- warp 
weavers  enlist  in  the  armies.  The  world  of  the 
arts  is  working  for  others  now :  for  the  Due  de 
Chartres  and  the  Due  d'Orleans,  who  most 
certainly  have  different  tastes  from  the  king,  and 
for  private  persons,  financial  magnates  like  La 
Live  and  Crozat,  great  lords  like  the  Rohan- 
Soubises ;  for  plain  business  folk,  who  are 
building  themselves  comfortable  houses  v^dth 
small  rooms,  less  formal  and  more  convenient, 
while  the  old  sovereign  shivers  with  cold  as  he 
daily  continues,  heroically  imperturbable,  to 
play  the  tragi-comedy  of  the  lever  in  his  chamber 
no  less  icy-cold  than  magnificent.  The  times 
have  brought  a  revolution :  the  Louis  XIV  art 
rapidly  crumbled  away  in  the  concluding  years 
of  the  century,  and  the  art  of  the  Regency 
began,  considerably  before  the  Regency  itself 
arrived. 

But  let  us  come  back  to  our  furniture.  The 
manufactory  of  the  Gobelins  was  founded  in 
1662  and  definitely  organised  in  1667  under  the 
title  of  Manufacture  royale  des  Meubles  de  la 
couronne.  It  was  planned  to  produce  many 
things  besides  tapestries ;  the  establishment  on 
the  banks  of  the  Bievre  was  to  be  filled  with 
"good  painters,  master  high- warp  weavers,  gold- 
smiths, founders,  engravers,  lapidaries,  cabinet- 
makers in  ebony  and  other  woods,  dyers  and 
other  good  craftsmen  in  every  kind  of  art  and 
craft."     A  vast  programme  indeed! 


CRAFTSMEN  13 

The  painters,  who  numbered  more  than  thirty 
at  the  same  time,  included  Van  der  Meulen,  and 
Houasse,  and  Monnoyer,  Michel  Corneillc, 
Nocret,  Bon  Boulogne.  Not  only  had  they  to 
make  cartoons  and  models,  but  also  to  carry  out 
the  painted  silks  (most  often  on  gros  de  Tours) 
which  were  among  the  styles  of  hangings  most 
eagerly  sought  after,  the  sculptors,  Coysevox, 
Tubi,  Slodtz  and  others,  made  vases  to  adorn 
parks,  trophies  of  gilded  bronze  and  various 
internal  ornaments  for  the  palaces ;  CafHeri, 
Cucci,  Lespagnandelle,  all  wood  workers,  carved 
in  oak,  walnut  and  lime  the  wooden  parts 
of  seats  and  tables,  gueridons,  pedestals,  balus- 
trades, doors,  frames  for  pictures  and  for 
mirrors ;  the  engravers,  Leclere,  Audran,  Berain, 
Le  Pautre,  produced  their  collections  of  designs 
for  ornaments ;  the  lapidaries,  at  first  the 
Italians  who  had  worked  for  Mazarin,  and  then 
their  French  pupils,  put  together  pavements 
and  facings  of  marble,  and  the  tops  of  tables; 
the  goldsmiths.  Loir,  Merlin,  de  Villers,  ham- 
mered and  chased  not  only  gold  nefs,  plate, 
table  utensils,  but  furniture  of  every  kind : 
cabinets,  consoles  and  gueridons,  benches  and 
stools,  chandeHers,  flower  pots  for  orange  trees, 
dogs  for  fireplaces.  .  .  .  This  is  the  furniture,  of 
Babylonian  luxury,  and  let  us  venture  to  say,  of 
very  doubtful  taste,  that  adorned  the  Mirror 
Gallery,  the  Grands  Appartements,  the  Queen's 
Appartement  and  the  King's  Chamber.  The 
cabinet-makers,  Pierre  Poitou,  Foulon,  Harmant, 


14    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

made  cabinets,  under-cupboards,  cabinets  for 
medals,  tables,  bureaux,  parquet  flooring,  and 
marquetry  clock  cases.  Lastly,  two  hundred 
and  fifty  weavers,  mostly  Flemish  at  the  outset, 
produced  those  admirable  tapestry  sets,  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles,  the  History  of  the  King,  the 
Battles  of  Alexander,  the  Royal  Residences, 
and  a  score  of  others  after  Raphael,  Le  Brun, 
Van  der  Meulen,  Noel  Coypel,  etc. 

These  efforts  of  so  many  various  artists  were 
never  scattered,  but  always  co-ordinated  for  the 
achieving  of  a  common  task  by  the  strong  hands 
of  Charles  Le  Brun.  The  King's  First  Painter 
received  the  title  of  Director  of  the  Factory,  as 
being  "  a  person  capable  and  intelligent  in  the 
art  of  painting,  to  make  the  designs  for  tapestry, 
sculpture  and  other  works,  to  cause  them  to  be 
correctly  carried  out,  and  to  have  the  general 
direction  and  supervision  over  all  the  workers  to 
be  employed  in  these  manufactures."  To  make 
sure  of  the  supply  of  craftsmen  there  was 
organised,  for  sixty  children  under  the  king's 
protection,  "the  Director's  seminary,  to  which 
there  shall  be  appointed  a  master  painter  under 
him,  who  shall  take  order  for  their  education 
and  instruction,  to  be  distributed  afterwards  by 
the  director  and  by  him  placed  in  apprenticeship 
with  the  masters  of  each  art  and  craft,  according 
as  he  shall  deem  them  fit  and  capable."  Such 
were  the  admirable  methods  placed  in  Le  Brun's 
hands  by  Colbert,  and  no  less  admirable  was  the 
use  he  made  of  them.     There   it  was  that  the 


THE    GOBELINS    OUTPUT     15 

Louis  XIV  style  was  elaborated,  with  an  imposing 
unity.  The  assimilation,  or  if  it  can  be  said, 
the  "  Frenchifying  "  of  the  foreign  workers  of  the 
early  days  came  to  pass  with  incredible  rapidity, 
but  this  same  phenomenon  has  taken  place 
among  us  in  every  period  :  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, when  we  borrowed  the  flamboyant  style 
from  England  ;  in  the  sixteenth  century,  when 
from  Italian  elements  we  created  our  Renaissance 
style,  which  is  so  completely  national ;  and  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  when  so  many  German 
cabinet-makers,  the  Oebens,  the  Rieseners,  the 
Roentgens,  so  speedily  became  French  of  the 
French  ! 

What  remains  now  out  of  the  huge  and  mar- 
vellous output  of  the  Gobelins  factory  between 
1662  and  1690?  Beyond  the  permanent 
decoration  of  Versailles— a  great  part  of  which 
was  destroyed  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries — and  tapestries,  already  very  scarce, 
there  is  hardly  anything ;  a  few  tables  of  stone 
mosaic,  and  a  few  frames  of  carved  and  gilded 
wood  on  the  pictures  in  the  Louvre  that  once 
belonged  to  the  King's  collection.  It  would 
be  hard  to  imagine  a  more  complete  shipwreck. 
Happily,  we  have  some  excellent  authorities  to 
give  us  approximate  information  as  to  this  varied 
output.  There  are  prints  representing  views  of 
the  interior  of  Versailles,  and  better  still,  tapes- 
tries showing  the  History  of  the  King,  in  par- 
ticular one  of  the  finest,  which  commemorates 
a  visit  paid  by  Louis  XIV  to  the  Gobehns.     Le 


i6    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

Brun  has  even  brought  silver  vases  chased  at  the 
factory  from  his  designs  into  his  Entry  of 
Alexander  into  Babylon. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  General  Inventories  of 
the  Furniture  belonging  to  the  Crown  may  give 
us  a  fairly  exact  idea  of  what  the  factory  turned 
out.  The  tables  were  nearly  all  mosaic  pictures 
inlaid  in  black  parangon^^  set  on  their  pied  or 
underpart  of  gilded  wood  with  heavily  emphasised 
carvings :  these  were  decorative  compositions  of 
rosettes,  rinceaux^  festoons,  etc.,  but  also  very 
frequently  irregular  scatterings  of  flowers,  fruits, 
birds,  caterpillars  and  butterflies  in  their  natural 
CO  ours,  with  rather  childish  attempts  to  trick 
the  eye  into  believing  them  real,  and  even 
horrors  such  as  can  still  be  seen  in  the  museums 
of  Florence — a  table  decorated  with  a  pack  of 
cards  flung  down  at  random. 

Cabinets,  when  the  factory  started,  were  all 
like  those  of  Mazarin,  complicated,  elaborate, 
rich  to  excess,  loud  with  many  colours,  each  one 
seeming  rather  a  mineralogical  collection  than  a 
work  of  art.  Here  is  an  example  of  the  result  of 
the  collaboration  of  lapidary  and  cabinet-maker: 
"  a  cabinet  of  ebony  with  two  large  handles  of 
gilt  brass  at  the  sides,  embellished  in  front  with 
three  porticoes  between  four  columns  of  German 
jasper,  their  bases  and  capitals  of  agate,  also 
German,  the  middle  portico  with  four  little 
columns  of  Oriental  jasper,  and  the  two  on  the 

I  Black  basalt,  which  is  nothing  else  than  the  touchstone  of 
jewellers. 


CABINETS  17 

two  sides  of  the  same  Oriental  jasper,  all  with 
bases  and  capitals  of  gold,  the  front  of  the  said 
cabinet  covered  with  pictures  of  stone  mosaic 
work  representing  landscapes,  and  enriched  with 
several  little  ornaments  of  gold  and  enamel." 
Seven  different  materials,  without  counting  the 
various  minerals  making  up  the  "  pictures." 
When  cabinet-maker,  goldsmith  and  lapidary- 
pooled  all  the  resources  of  their  arts,  the  royal 
furniture  was  enriched  with  "  a  cabinet  in  the 
shape  of  a  tomb,  covered  with  a  leaf  of  silver, 
made  up  of  twenty  drawers  enriched  with  agate, 
jasper,  lapis  lazuli,  cornelian,  cameos  and  other 
precious  stones ;  in  the  middle,  in  front,  a  door 
of  one  single  agate,  between  two  columns  also  of 
agate,  with  their  bases  and  capitals  of  silver  gilt. 
The  said  cabinet  standing  on  four  silver  spheres." 
The  table  intended  to  carry  this  cabinet  of  gold- 
smithery  was  "  lacquered  after  the  fashion  of 
porphyry."  What  a  beauty  it  must  have  been  ! 
These  cabinets  were  fairly  soon  out  of  fashion  ; 
banished  from  the  royal  apartments,  they  were 
stranded  in  natural  history  collections.  The 
Gobelins  then  made  pieces  that  were  much  less 
Italian  and  much  more  austere,  cabinets  of  cedar, 
partially  gilt  and  with  ornaments  of  gilt  bronze  ; 
of  Brazil  wood  with  compartments  outHned  in 
ivory ;  and  above  all,  pieces  of  every  kind  in 
marquetry  of  tortoise-shell,  pewter  and  brass, 
with  ornaments  of  chased  and  gilt  bronze,  after 
the  manner  of  Boulle.  The  same  good  fortune 
fell  to  this  prince  of  cabinet-makers  as  had  been 


i8     LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

the  lot  of  the  Clouets  among  the  painters  of  the 
previous  century,  namely,  that  as  he  never  signed 
his  work,  many  pieces  are  unquestionably  ascribed 
to  him  that  were  never  made  by  him,  but  by 
cabinet-makers  at  the  Gobelins  or  elsewhere  who 
employed  the  same  technique. 

These  magnificent  pieces  are,  it  is  true,  outside 
the  modest  scope  of  the  present  book  ;  but  as 
they  have  always  been  and  still  are  looked  upon 
as  the  supreme  expression  of  the  Louis  XIV 
style,  we  cannot  refrain  from  speaking  of  Andre- 
Charles  Boulle. 

Like  so  many  others  he  was  of  foreign  extraction, 
but  the  assimilation  was  already  complete  among 
the  Boulles  for  two  generations  back  when  he 
was  born,  in  1642,  "in  the  galleries  of  the 
Louvre."  His  grandfather,  a  furniture-maker  of 
Neufchatel,  and  a  Calvinist,  had  been  brought 
from  Switzerland  by  Henri  IV  and  given  an 
abode  in  the  great  "  waterside  gallery "  that 
joined  the  palace  of  the  Louvre  to  the  palace  of 
the  Tuileries.  This  privilege  was  to  be  continued 
to  the  family  for  five  generations  ;  Andre-Charles 
obtained  it  in  1672.  Divided  into  little  lodgings, 
the  great  gallery  was  peopled  by  artists  of  every 
kind,  painters,  sculptors,  goldsmiths,  enamellers, 
down  to  the  "  fourbisseurs,"  who  hammered  out 
pieces  of  armour  there.  These  privileged  people, 
who  lived  there  with  their  families  in  the  closest 
clannishness,  and  often  married  among  them- 
selves, had  the  title  of  purveyors  to  the  king  and 
escaped  the  very  strict  regulations  of  mastership 


BOULLE  19 

in  their  crafts,  not  a  very  good  thing  for  the 
technical  quality  of  their  work.  They  were 
directly  amenable  to  the  Surintendance  des 
Batiments.  That  is  how  Boulle  was  always 
independent  of  Le  Brun,  which  did  not  prevent 
him  from  feeling,  like  everyone  else,  the  influence 
of  that  powerful  personality.  Boulle  also  was  a 
complete  artist  all  round  :  we  find  him  described 
as  "  architect,  painter  and  sculptor  in  mosaic, 
cabinet-maker,  chaser  and  inlayer  to  the  King," 
and  again,  in  another  document,  as  "  designer  of 
monograms  and  master  in  ordinary  of  the  seals  to 
the  King." 

Boulle,  rather  like  Rembrandt,  was  incapable 
of  combating  his  passion  for  collecting,  and  in 
spite  of  the  large  sums  he  earned  (up  to  fifty 
thousand  livres,  we  are  told,  for  a  cabinet),  he 
Hved  always  in  embarrassment  and  plagued  by 
law-suits.  To  crown  his  misfortunes,  when  he 
was  nearly  eighty  years  old  he  had  the  agony  of 
seeing  his  admirable  collections  disappear  in  a 
fire,  which  at  the  same  time  devoured  all  the 
furniture  both  finished  and  in  the  making  that 
was  in  his  shop  and  his  workrooms.  There  is 
preserved  a  petition  he  addressed  to  the  king 
after  this  disaster,  in  which  he  sets  down  his 
losses  at  three  hundred  thousand  livres.  He  had 
forty-eight  drawings  by  Raphael,  a  priceless 
manuscript  by  Rubens  containing  his  notes  on  his 
travels  in  Italy  and  remarks  on  painting,  pictures 
by  Corregio,  Snyders,  Le  Sueur,  Mignard  and 
Le  Brun  ;  an  important  collection  of  engravings, 


20    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

including  a  complete  set  of  Albert  Diirer ; 
bronzes  by  Michel  Angelo,  three  thousand  rare 
medals ;  he  was  a  connoisseur  of  the  very  highest 
taste. 

But  we  must  not  make  BouUe  out  to  be  the 
only  cabinet-maker  of  his  time.  He  did  not 
invent  the  style  that  has  been  given  his  name  ; 
several  collaborators  helped  him  with  his  bronzes : 
Domenico  Cucci,  the  great  goldsmith  Claude 
Balhn,  the  sculptors  Van  Opstal,  Warin,  Girardon, 
who  supplied  him  with  models  in  wax  and  in 
plaster.  His  arabesques  and  rinceaux  are  often 
clearly  copied  from  Berain.  His  special  merit 
seems  to  have  been  that  of  a  clever  manipulator 
of  elements  he  had  not  invented  for  himself.  He 
was  unrivalled  for  his  skill  in  wedding  reliefs  in 
gilt  bronze  to  marquetry  backgrounds  to  achieve 
perfect  harmony,  and  in  giving  his  furniture, 
especially  his  cupboards,  noble,  austere,  and 
dignified  architectural  shapes,  which  make  mag- 
nificent decorative  pieces  of  them,  worthy  to  play 
a  leading  part  in  the  grandiose  conceptions  of 
Charles  le  Brun.  But  they  are  merely  decorations, 
and  we  must  not  try  to  find  anything  else  in 
them.  Their  outside  is  the  best  part  of  them. 
Under  their  dazzling  finery  and  within  their 
masterly  fines  these  pieces  of  furniture  are  as  ill 
constructed  as  the  facade  plastered  on  to  the 
Louvre  by  Charles  Perrault.  The  ornamentation 
is  not  the  accompaniment  of  the  shape,  but 
determines  it.  Here  too  often  lies  the  fault  of 
this  Louis  XIV  art :  magnificent  exteriors  masking 


COLBERT    AND    LOUIS    XIV  21 

hollow  sham.     "Handsome   head   .  .  .    but  no 
brain  inside,"  said  La  Fontaine's  fox. 

The  Boulle  pieces  that  are  genuinely  by 
Andre-Charles  are  as  scarce  as  Clouets  by  Janet 
and  Francois.  His  four  sons,  cabinet-makers 
like  their  father,  imitated  him  to  the  best  of  their 
ability,  and  later  still,  towards  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  cabinet-makers  Georges 
Jacob  and  Philippe  Montigny  made  excellent 
imitations  with  bronzes  cast  from  his  models. 
These  imitations  are  hard  to  distinguish  from  the 
originals  when  they  are  not  signed.  W  e  may 
add  that  this  kind  of  marquetry  is  so  far  from 
solid  that  the  real  genuine  Boulle  pieces  have  had 
to  be  almost  entirely  remade. 

In  short,  in  founding  the  Gobelins  and  othe 
factories  and  favouring  the  artists  of  the  galler 
of  the  Louvre,  it  was  Louis  XIV's  intention  to 
furnish  his  royal  abodes  with  such  magnificence 
that  they  should  be  worthy  of  "the  greatest 
monarch  of  the  universe."  Colbert's  aim,  in 
advising  him  to  take  these  measures,  was  to 
establish  within  the  borders  of  the  realm,  or  to 
bring  to  perfection,  luxury  industries  so  that  the 
French,  in  the  first  place,  would  no  longer  be 
forced  to  buy  their  tapestries,  fine  furniture,  rich 
stuffs,  plate  glass  and  the  like  from  foreign 
countries ;  and  that  they  might  in  time  compete 
beyond  their  own  frontiers  with  the  workshops 
of  Italy,  the  Low  Countries,  Spain  and  Germany. 
Both  the  King  and  Colbert  achieved  their  end, 
for  towards  the  middle  of  the  reign  France  no 


22    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

longer  in  any  way  paid  tribute  to  foreigners 
where  the  arts  pertaining  to  furnishing  were 
concerned.  It  was  the  very  utmost  if  a  few 
caned  seats  were  brought  in  from  Holland. 

Within  a  few  years  space — from  1674  to  1686 — 
the  Chateau  de  Clagny  is  built,  decorated,  and 
furnished  for  Madame  de  Montespan  ;  the 
Versailles  of  Le  Vau  is  enlarged,  under  the 
supervision  of  Jules  Hardouin-Mansart,  by  the 
Mirror  Gallery,  the  two  wings  of  the  Ministers, 
the  huge  North  and  South  wings.  This  colossal 
palace  is  speedily  decorated  and  furnished  ;  at  the 
same  time  the  modest  "porcelain"  Trianon^ 
is  knocked  down,  and  its  place  taken  by  the  great 
Trianon  of  pink  marble,  and  this  also  is  decorated 
and  furnished  immediately.  Marly  is  begun  in 
1679,  finished,  decorated  and  furnished  in  1686; 
the  King's  impatience  brooks  no  delay.  The 
craftsmen  are  equal  to  everything.  And  we 
say  nothing  of  Saint  Cloud,  built,  decorated 
and  furnished  for  Monsieur,  nor  of  the  other 
royal  houses  whose  furnishings  are  completely 
renewed. 

This  example  is  followed  everywhere,  once  the 
first  impetus  is  given.  Chateaux  and  town 
houses,  old  and  new,  are  filled  with  beds,  arm- 
chairs, cupboards  and  tables  in  the  new  fashion  ; 
when  the  King  has  finished  furnishing  and 
decreased  his  commissions  the  royal  factories  will 
be  idle,  but  innumerable  joiners,  cabinet-makers 

I  In  reality  faced  with  blue  and  white  faience  "  in  the  fashion 
of  the  wares  of  China." 


HOME    LIFE  23 

and  tapestry  weavers  will  go  on  turning  out  for 
private  persons  furniture  in  the  same  style,  and 
will  presently  invent  new  kinds  to  satisfy  new 
wants,  devising  fresh  shapes  to  suit  their  taste, 
in  harmony  with  the  new  architecture. 

Just  at  the  moment  when  the  King's  influence 
over  the  furnishing  arts  begins  to  be  eclipsed  a 
rapid  and  profound  change  takes  place  in  manners. 
It  cannot  be  said  that  social  life  loses  its  import- 
ance, the  contrary  is  true,  indeed ;  but  alongside 
of  it  home  life,  which  had  been  wholly  sacrificed 
to  it,  takes  on  an  increasing  importance.  People 
want  their  ease  and  comforts,  to  suffer  less  from 
cold,  to  be  able  to  seclude  themselves  from  their 
train  of  domestics  and  from  troublesome  out- 
siders, to  be  able  to  go  conveniently  from  one 
part  of  the  house  to  another,  to  find  at  meal 
times  their  table  prepared  in  a  room^  devoted 
to  the  purpose.  It  appears  that  all  at  once  a 
host  of  new  wants  are  discovered  which  nobody 
had  ever  thought  of  before.  People  have  a  town 
flat,  a  chateau  or  simple  country  villa  no  longer 
merely  to  display  to  their  friends  a  sumptuousness 
conferring  prestige,  but  also  in  order  to  live 
pleasantly  in  them.  Anyone  about  to  build  no 
longer  demands  from  his  architect  above  every- 
thing a  suite  of  large  pompous  halls,  whose  long 
vista  with  all  doors  open  may  give  visitors  the 
illusion  of  a  gallery  in  a  palace,  and  off  which  the 
cabinets  and  little  rooms  in  which  the  household 
will  live  their  ordinary  life  are  to  be  dumped  as 
best  they  can.     He  now  wants  instead  rooms  fit 


24    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

to  live  in,  adapted  each  to  its  own  use,  well 
warmed,  well  equipped  with  outlets  and  con- 
veniences, in  a  word,  rooms  that  shall  be  on  an 
ordinary  human  scale  instead  of  seeming  to  be 
made  for  a  race  of  giants.  The  French  people 
will  still  wait  a  long  time  before  they  recapture 
from  the  English  their  own  good  old  word 
confort,  but  in  default  of  the  name  they  are 
beginning  to  have  the  substance.  This  same 
range  of  wants  will  bring  wainscoting  to  the 
walls,  wooden  floors  for  underfoot,  smaller  fire- 
places, surmounted  with  mirrors,  more  perfection 
in  joinery  and  wrought  ironwork,  and  also  an 
equivalent  transformation  in  furniture. 

This  progressive  transformation  is  the  mark  of 
the  passing  from  the  Louis  XIV  style  to  the 
Louis  XV  style.  The  Regency  style  in  all  strict- 
ness has  no  more  real  existence  than  the 
Directoire  style,  but  it  is  convenient  to  have  a 
name  for  furniture  that  still  retains  certain 
characteristics  of  the  Louis  XIV  period,  and 
already  shows  some  that  belong  to  the  Louis  XV 
period.  But  it  must  be  clearly  realised  that  the 
duration  of  this  time  of  transition  does  not 
coincide  with  that  of  the  government  of  Philippe 
d'Orleans.  His  regency  lasted  for  eight  years 
(1715  to  1723);  but  it  may  be  said  that  if,  on 
the  one  hand,  the  Louis  XV  style  is  already  in 
existence  in  1723,  on  the  other  hand  the  Regency 
style — if  there  is  a  Regency  style — did  not  wait 
for  the  death  of  the  aged  Louis  XIV  to  be  com- 
pletely established.     Louis  the  Great  lived  too 


ANTOINE    WATTEAU       25 

long,  and  survived  many  men  and  many  things, 
his  style  as  well  as  his  greatness  itself. 

Let  us,  to  be  precise,  set  up  a  parallel  of  a  few 
dates.  In  171 1  Gillot  succeeds  Berain  as 
designer  of  scenery  and  costumes  to  the  Opera ; 
in  1 71 2  one  of  his  pupils,  a  young  Fleming  ot 
twenty-eight,  who  spends  his  days  in  the  younger 
Crozat's  picture  gallery  intoxicating  himself  with 
the  colour  of  Rubens  and  Veronese,  and  who 
paints  scenes  of  soldier  life  or  scenes  from  the 
Comedie  Italienne,  this  young  man  is  "  received  " 
into  the  Royal  Academy  of  Painting.  His  name 
is  Antoine  Watteau.  Out  of  the  thirty-seven 
years  of  life  doled  out  to  him  he  is  to  spend 
thirty-one  in  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  And  it 
is  in  1710  that  Robert  de  Cotte  finishes  the 
Chapel  of  Versailles ;  in  1710  Germain  Boffrand 
begins  the  decoration  of  the  hotel  Soubise,  the 
finest  and  most  typical  ornamental  work  of  the 
Regency  style,  and  one  of  the  most  admirable  in 
the  whole  range  of  French  art. 

On  the  death  of  Louis  XIV  the  court  scatters 
in  haste,  and  the  boy  king  is  removed  from 
Versailles.  The  Regent  is  intelligent,  humane, 
generous,  as  brave  as  a  sword  blade,  but  wholly 
possessed  by  idleness  and  debauchery.  Every 
kind  of  hypocrisy  flings  away  its  mask,  and  with 
such  vicious  men  as  the  Duke  Philippe  d'Orleans 
and  his  former  tutor  Abbe  Dubois  governing  the 
realm,  everyone  indulges  himself  to  his  heart's 
content.  To  the  devil  with  majesty,  gravity 
and  virtue,  those  played  out  old  hags  !     Pleasure 


26    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

is  god,  and  the  bacclianalian  orgy  of  the  Regency 
is  soon  in  full  swing.  To  be  truthful,  of  course 
it  is  not  everybody  that  in  the  race  for  pleasure 
shows  the  same  animal  grossness  of  a  Parabere, 
a  Duchesse  de  Berry  or  her  father  the  Regent. 
There  are  refined  and  elegant  voluptuaries  and 
poets  like  Watteau,  who  transfigures  pleasure  by 
bathing  it  in  a  delicate  mist  of  beauty  and  dream ; 
but  there  was  at  the  moment,  by  way  of  reaction, 
an  hour  of  drunken  orgy  that  few  escaped.^ 
That  century  of  the  suavity  and  elegance  of 
living  had  its  wild  youth  between  fifteen  and 
twenty-five.  It  had  this  wild  youth  in  the 
domain  of  art  as  well  as  in  that  of  manners,  and 
this  was  the  vogue  of  the  rocaille  style,  which  is, 
so  to  say,  merely  an  eccentric  part  of  the  Regency 
style.  We  discuss  it  elsewhere  ;  ^  suffice  it  here 
to  observe  that  the  two  artists  who  most  of  all 
exemplify  "  Rocaille  "  in  its  most  violent  form 
were  of  foreign  blood  :  Gilles-Marie  Oppenord, 
from  the  Netherlands,  and  Juste-Aurele  Meis- 
sonier,  a  native  of  Turin. 

Along  with  Boffrand,  the  most  remarkable 
architect  of  the  period  is  Robert  de  Cotte,  the 
brother-in-law,  disciple  and  continuator  of  Jules 
Hardouin-Mansart,  the  creator  of  the  admirable 
episcopal  palace  of  Strasbourg.  He  is  a  charm- 
ing artist,  of  an  elegance  wholly  French,  Attic, 
and    measured,    who    preserves    just    the    right 

1  It  is  unnecessary  to  say  that  we  are  speaking  here  only  of 
that  infinitesimal  part  of  the  nation  that  made  up  the  aristocracy 
of  birth  and  wealth. 

2  In  French  Furniture  under  Louis  XV, 


CHARLES    CRESSENT       27 

amount  of  the  nobleness  of  the  Louis  XIV 
manner.  Starting  with  1699,  he  was  "  intcndant 
and  general  supervisor  of  buildings,  gardens,  arts 
and  manufactories  to  the  King."  Unfortunately 
the  factories,  especially  the  Gobelins,  were  then 
fallen  on  evil  days.  Robert  de  Cotte  has  left 
exquisite  models  for  furniture  in  his  collection  of 
designs,^  but  no  actual  piece  has  come  down  to  us. 
The  cabinet-maker  par  excellence  of  this 
period  was  Charles  Cressent.  He  sums  up  the 
furniture  of  the  Regency  just  as  BouUe  did  that 
of  Louis  XIV.  He  was  a  Frenchman  of  unmixed 
descent,  born  at  Amiens  in  1685,  the  son  of  a 
sculptor  who  remained  in  the  provinces  and  the 
grandson  of  a  master  joiner  of  Picardy.  He 
himself  was  both  sculptor  and  cabinet-maker,  as 
capable  of  making  the  wax  models  for  his  bronzes 
as  of  designing  his  furniture  as  a  whole,  of  plan- 
ning their  construction  and  veneering  them  with 
costly  woods.  Cressent  brought  a  new  element 
of  colour  into  cabinet-making ;  the  moment  had 
come  when  the  Compagnie  des  Indes  was 
beginning  to  import  oversea  woods  of  warm  hues ; 
the  funereal  ebony  was  abandoned,  but  we  had 
not  yet  reached  the  light  gaiety  of  rosewood  and 
the  rich  dark  ruddy  glow  of  mahogany.  Cressent's 
favourite  combination  is  still  austere ;  it  consists 
of  amaranth  wood  in  "  fern-leaf "  veneer  and 
enframed  with  violet-wood.  On  this  background 
the  ormolu  bronze  shows  up  superbly,  with  more 
suaveness  than  on  the  ebony  of  the  Boulles. 

I  They  have  never  been  engraved. 


28    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

Charles  Cressent  had  several  manners.  In 
certain  of  his  pieces  he  displays  himself  more  as 
a  sculptor  than  as  a  cabinet-maker  ;  in  these  the 
bronzes  assume  an  exaggerated  importance, 
covering  almost  half  the  surface  and  standing  out 
in  high  relief,  almost  a  little  turgidly  ;  but  what 
admirable  chasing,  rich  and  sinewy  at  the  same 
time,  broad  or  concise  at  need,  and  always 
free,  easy  and  full  of  life  and  intelligence.  At 
other  times  he  drew  inspiration  from  the  light 
grace  of  Berain  or  Gillot  or  Watteau,  and  placed 
on  a  ground  of  satinwood  certain  amusing 
"  monkey- pieces  "  in  framings  of  always  perfectly 
balanced  curves.  But  his  most  perfect  works 
were  certain  flat  bureaux,  very  sober  and  austere, 
with  lines  of  impeccable  purity,  masses  balanced 
to  perfection,  and  their  bronzes  proportioned 
and  distributed  with  marvellous  instinct  and 
tact.  The  most  important  of  these  bronzes  are 
found  at  the  top  of  the  legs,  under  the  rounded 
angles  of  the  fiat  top  of  the  bureau,  those  busts 
of  female  figures  that  were  called  espagnolettes; 
their  dainty  charm  makes  them  sisters  to 
Watteau's  most  piquant  child-women,  but  they 
are  untouched  by  the  slightest  meanness  or 
triviality.  An  exquisite  profile,  a  bosom  barely 
repressed  by  the  pointed  bodice,  a  tiny  toque — 'tis 
Silvia,  'tis  Miranda,  'tis  Columbine  or  Rosalind. 
Italian  names,  but  the  women  so  French  ! 
Between  these  bureaux  and  those  of  Boulle  there 
is  no  real  essential  difference ;  but  how  much 
more  developed  is  Cressent's  sense  of  line,  of  the 


FRANCE    SUPREME         29 

beautiful  curve  !  Beside  him  Boulle  is  massive 
and  lacking  in  grace,  but  Cressent's  gracefulness 
does  not  exclude  nobility.  These  pieces  in  some 
sort  epitomise  all  the  qualities  of  the  two  periods ; 
they  are  perhaps  the  supreme  flower  of  French 
taste. 

Now  the  task  is  accomplished,  and  the  last 
traces  of  Italian  or  German  influence  have  dis- 
appeared from  French  furniture.  The  great 
national  tradition  is  re-established.  Let  us 
widen  our  horizon  ;  henceforth  Italy  has  lost 
her  artistic  supremacy,  won  by  France  in  high 
conflict,  n  every  province  of  art,  and  to  be  held 
for  a  long  period.  Now  all  the  peoples  of  Europe 
must  turn  to  us  when  they  are  fain  to  embellish 
the  setting  of  their  lives.  The  great  Colbert 
must  needs  be  well  content  in  his  tomb  at  Saint- 
Eustache. 


SECOND  PART 
THE  LOUIS  XIV  STYLE 


PART    TWO 
THE   LOUIS   XIV    STYLE 

CHAPTER  ONE :  CHARACTER- 
ISTICS AND  TECHNIQUE  OF 
THE  STYLE 

One  must  needs  regret  when  one  has  to  speak 
of  the  Louis  XIV  style  that  our  language  lacks 
the  richness  of  Italian,  which  can  add  to  the 
simple  meaning  of  a  word  the  notion  of  great- 
ness by  merely  clapping  the  termination  one  on 
to  it.  Is  it  not  more  expressive,  in  talking  of 
Versailles,  to  say,  uno  grandissimo  palazzone 
than  "  an  enormous  palace "  ?  And  is  not 
seggiolone  marvellously  adapted  to  signify  a  huge 
and  imposing  arm-chair  of  gilded  wood  in  this 
style  ?  The  most  usual  and  most  striking 
characteristic  of  this  style  is,  in  fact,  greatness, 
and  first  of  all  in  the  root  meaning  of  the  word, 
for  in  this  period,  so  much  in  love  with  greatness 
in  everything,  when  men  seemed  to  seek  to 
increase  even  their  stature,  like  the  actors  of 
antiquity,  above  by  means  of  the  big  peruke  with 
curls  arranged  in  stages,  and  below  by  means  of 
their  high  red  heels,  a  table  was  much   bigger 

33  e 


34    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

than  it  needed  to  be,  with  overgrown  legs  joined 
by  over-massive  cross-pieces ;  an  arm-chair  was 
too  tall  on  its  legs,  nearly  big  enough  for  two, 
and  its  back  of  excessive  height,  unless  we  take  it 
that  that  vast  rectangle's  only  function  was  to 
act  as  background  to  those  huge  perukes  invented 
by  the  Sieur  Binet  and  called  after  him  binettes, 
or  else  for  those  lofty  erections  of  lace  and  ribbon, 
known  as  fontanges,  that  crowned  the  heads  of 
ladies. 

But  this  furniture  has  another  greatness  of  a 
less  material  kind,  what  Louis  XIV  had  in  his 
mind's  eye  when  he  used  to  say,  "That  has 
something  great  .  .  .  that  touches  greatnesss  " 
.  .  .  the  highest  praise  he  could  bestow :  the 
grandeur  that  comes  from  ample,  spacious  lines, 
not  always  simple,  but  nearly  always  architectural, 
from  masses  solidly  placed,  from  plain  surfaces 
on  which  a  rich  flat  decoration  could  unfold 
itself  without  break  or  impediment.  This  great- 
ness is  power,  it  is  nobility.  With  no  play  on 
words,  this  Louis  XIV  style  is  a  style  as  noble  as 
that  of  our  great  classical  writers.  Unfortunately, 
the  phrase  "noble  style  "  brings  with  it  also  an 
unfavourable  turn,  as  when,  for  instance,  we  speak 
of  Despreaux'  Ode  siir  la  prise  de  Namur. 
All  Louis  XIV  art,  Le  Brun  art,  is  of  this  kind  of 
nobility ;  there  was  never  found  the  man  of 
genius  who  could  have  brought  it  to  the  pitch 
of  perfection  reached  by  Racine's  poetry  and 
Bossuet's  prose.  In  architecture,  in  painting,  in 
the  decorative  arts,  the  style  of  the  period  always 


INSINCERITY  35 

has  something  rhetorical  and  hollow.  It  is  too 
much  a  question  of  facade  ;  does  this  derive  from 
its  Italian  origins  ?  There  is  a  very  striking 
resemblance,  in  their  respective  scales,  between 
an  Italian  church  facade  cased  with  marbles, 
whose  lines  and  divisions  have  no  relation  to  the 
architecture  uDon  which  it  is  fastened,  and  the 
fa9ade  of  a  Boulle  cupboard,  a  rich  casing  of 
many-coloured  and  incongruous  materials  hiding 
a  framework  of  deal — and  pretty  badly  put 
together  at  that — whose  exact  structure  escapes 
us.  On  the  other  hand,  in  a  Gothic  fagade,  the 
ornamentation  is  infallibly  incorporated  with  the 
structure  and  serves  to  make  it  manifest ;  in  a 
French  dresser  of  the  fifteenth  century  the 
framework  provides  both  the  basis  and  the  first 
elements  of  the  decoration.  Claude  Perrault's 
facade  of  the  Louvre,  or  that  by  Salomon  de 
Brosses  at  Saint-Gervais,  and  that  of  the  Boulle 
cupboard  are,  properly  speaking,  deceptions,  lies ; 
the  front  of  Notre-Dame  and  a  dresser  of 
the  time  of  Charles  VIII  are  sincerity  itself. 
Let  us  add  that  less  ambitious  cupboards,  such 
as  the  ones  reproduced  here,  pieces  in  the 
tradition  of  pure  joinery,  also  show  this  splendid 
sincerity  with  their  bold  mouldings  that  so  clearly 
display  their  actual  architecture, 

Louis  XIV  furniture  of  the  costliest  type  seems 
ashamed  of  even  the  very  scanty  usefulness  it 
possesses ;  it  does  all  it  can  to  hide  it.  In  the 
same  way  Claude  Perrault's  Louvre  would  blush 
to  display  roofs  or  chimneys  or  gutters.     As  much 


36    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

as  possible  they  give  themselves  the  air  of  blocks, 
of  monolithic  pedestals — it  is  more  ^'  noble." 
So  too  the  same  Perrault  declared,  "  it  is  a  great 
beauty  in  a  building  to  appear  as  though  made  of 
a  single  stone,  the  joinings  being  invisible." 
There  you  have  it,  the    detestable    doctrine  of 

The  Louis  XIV  style  is  sumptuous.  It  is  fain 
to  strike  and  to  impose  itself  rather  than  to 
please,  less  to  charm  than  to  astonish.  Some- 
times it  has  a  heavy  and  fatiguing  stateliness. 
But  v/e  must  not  carry  this  criticism  too  far ;  it 
could  relax  and  smile  too.  The  "  Porcelain 
Trianon "  was  anything  but  stately,  with  its 
blue  and  white  vases  bristling  along  the  lines  of 
its  roof,  and  its  "various  birds  done  in  natural 
colours."  The  grandson  of  Henri  IV  was  too 
fond  of  women  not  to  oblige  his  academic  artists 
to  make  all  proper  concessions  to  feminine  taste. 
At  Versailles  may  be  read  a  page  of  one  of 
Mansart's  reports,  in  the  margin  of  which  the 
master  has  written  as  follows  :  "  It  seems  to  me 
that  something  ought  to  be  altered,  that  the 
subjects  are  too  serious,  and  that  there  must  be 
something  of  youth  mingled  with  what  is  to  be 
done.  You  are  to  bring  me  sketches  when  you 
come,  or  at  any  rate  ideas.  There  must  be 
something  of  childhood  diffused  everywhere." 
And  in  fact,  in  the  decorations  of  Versailles 
children  shed  their  gaiety  everywhere,  from 
the  Salle  de  V  Oeil-de-BcEiif,  where  they  are 
gambolling  like  kids  all  along  the  cornice,  to  the 


CHINOISERIES  37 

garden  of  the  Grand  Trianon,  where  they  prance 
so  merrily  in  the  water,  passing  through  the 
Southern  parterre,  where  grave  Sphinxes  allow 
themselves  to  be  unceremoniously  bestridden  by 
them,  and  by  the  ponds  of  the  Seasons,  where 
they  are  sporting  with  the  gods. 

But  there  must  have  been  a  pleasant  contrast 
with  the  Olympian  pomp  of  the  Grands 
Appartements  in  the  Chinese  objects  that  were 
everywhere  to  be  seen  in  them.  Without  the 
actual  inventories  it  would  be  impossible  to 
believe  to  what  extent  the  contemporaries  of  the 
Great  King  delighted  in  everything  that  came  out 
of  China.  We  have  seen  that  Boileau  shared  in 
this  universal  craze.  In  every  royal  house  there 
were  eimneiibieinents — a  bed  complete,  arm- 
chairs, folding  stools,  hassocks,  and  wall  hangings 
— in  white  satin  or  white  taffeta,  "embroidered 
and  covered  on  both  sides  with  flowers,  figures, 
animals,  and  other  things  from  China,  in 
various  colours."  The  Kings's  own  chamber  was 
"emmeublee"^  in  this  fashion  at  the  moment 
when  the  four  friends,  Racine,  Boileau,  Chapelle 
and  La  Fontaine,  in  1668,  paid  a  visit  to 
Versailles,  which  La  Fontaine  has  so  delightfully 
described  for  us.  '"  Among  other  beauties,  they 
paused  a  long  time  to  look  at  the  bed,  the 
tapestry  and  the  chairs  with  which  the  King's 
chamber  and  cabinet  have  been  furnished  :  it  is 
a  Chinese  stuff,  full  of  figures  embodying  the 
whole  religion  of  that  country.     For  want  of  a 

I  It  was  a  summer  set  of  furniture. 


38    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

Brahmin'  our  four  friends  understood  it  not  at 
all."  And  this  "  dressing  gown  of  white  satin, 
embellished  with  Chinese  embroidery,  lined  with 
green  taffeta,"  is  neither  more  nor  less  than 
Louis  XIV's  own  dressing  gown.  "Chinese  stuff, 
a  gold  ground  sprinkled  with  large  leaves  and 
plants,  from  which  spring  branches  of  fiowers  with 
birds  and  butterflies  .  .  .  blue  Chinese  gauze, 
sprinkled  with  flowers  in  gold  and  silk  .  .  . 
Chinese  gauze  amaranth  or  dried  rose  colour  .  .  . 
Chmese  stuff  of  flame  colour  .  .  .  Chinese  stuff, 
silk,  of  violet  ground  sprinkled  and  filled  with 
flowers  painted  in  divers  colours  .  .  ."  ail  the 
dream  stuffs  that  China  wove,  embroidered,  and 
painted  in  the  days  of  the  first  Ts'ings,  shimmer 
in  eveiy  page  of  the  old  inventories  of  the  Crown 
furniture. 

Ihe  Mercuries  and  Apollos  that  filled  the 
ceilings  above  the  great  gold  and  marble  salons 
saw  beneath  them  things  still  more  suprising. 
Here,  a  ''  black  carpet  with  Chinese  lettering 
edged  with  a  band  of  yellow,  with  little  flowers 
in  embroidery " ;  there  a  lacquer  cabinet  on 
which  geese  are  flying  and  rabbits  browsing — 
animals  far  from  noble ;  another  on  which  they 
perceive  "  a  kind  of  monster  with  all  four  legs 
in  the  air  "  ;  ^  and  lastly,  everywhere  on  the  most 
majestic  tables  of  mosaic  work,  on  the  scabellons  * 

1  A  Brahmin  as  a  Chinese  priest  I  La  Fontaine  does  not  go 
into  the  matter  so  closely ;  besides,  Persia,  China,  India,  Japan 
were  all  one  for  the  Westerns  of  this  age. 

2  1  he  dragon  of  F6,  doubtless. 


VERSAILLES  39 

of  Boulle,  and  the  gilded  consoles  of  Cucci, 
pagodes  everywhere.  That  was  the  name  given 
to  those  little  figures  of  every  kind  of  material, 
imported  from  China  or  from  India,  which 
were  chosen  for  their  oddity,  and  over  which 
everybody  went  crazy :  Pou-Tai,  obese  and 
laughing  on  his  sack  of  rice ;  Sakya-Muni 
meditating  on  his  lotus-blossom ;  Lao-Tse  with 
enormous  forehead  sitting  on  his  buffalo ;  "  an 
old  man  huddled  up  on  a  stork,"  or  "  a  beggar 
leaning  against  a  gallows."  But  what  must 
have  made  Alcides  drop  his  club  out  of  his 
hands  with  astonishment,  was  to  see  one  day  a 
Chinese  cabinet  make  its  appearance,  "  to  which 
his  Majesty  has  had  ten  silver  plaques  fastened 
representing  the  labours  of  Hercules."  This 
singular  combination  gives  us  quite  new  side- 
lights on  the  taste  of  the  monarch. 

What  was  there  not  to  be  found  in  that 
Versailles,  which  we  are  wrong  in  thinking  of 
as  all  solemn  state,  and  consequently  in  all 
the  elegant  interiors  that  prided  themselves  in 
resembling  Versailles?  "One  hundred  and 
seventy-one  bouquets  of  various  kinds  of  flowers 
.  .  .  made  with  one  single  roll  of  silk  cords  .  .  . 
515  little  grotesque  figures  made,  like  the 
flowers,  of  rolled  twist  ...  28  other  larger 
figures  of  pasteboard  and  dressed  in  Indian  robes 
ot  gold  and  silver  and  silk  brocade"  .  .  .  table-tops 
entirely  made  of  shells  and  cement  .  .  .  spinning 
wheels  with  their  travoils  ^  in  the  apartments  of 

I  Winders  for  the  thread. 


40    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

princesses,  for  in  these  days  princesses  span  and 
poetesses  sang  of  their  distaffs : — 

Qiienonille,  uion  souci,je  vous  promets  etjiire 
Dc  I'ons  aimer  fonjonrs,  ct  ne  jamais  changer 
Voire  lioiinciir  doinestiqiie  en  iin  bicn  etranger. 

In  the  alcoves,  just  as  in  the  rooms  of  girls 
to-day,  might  be  seen  little  whatnots  on  which 
there  were  ranged  knick-knacks  of  the  most 
heterogeneous  kind :  a  knife-grinder  with  his 
cart,  made  of  silver  filigree ;  a  stag  of  blown 
glass ;  a  coral  tree  ;  a  doll's  house.  There  might 
be  seen,  put  up  on  the  chimney-pieces,  paper 
hand  screens,  upon  which  were  engraved  the  far 
from  edifying  "  Delights  of  the  French  soldier  "  ; 
innumerable  bouquets  of  artificial  flowers  in 
porcelain  vases,  "  three  thousand  and  thirty-one 
bouquets  of  flowers  of  various  colours  made  of 
pleated  silk  gauze  "  :  round  tables  made  of  glass ; 
and  even  houlcs  de  jar' din,  "phials  of  glass 
tinned  inside,  mounted  on  feet,  placed  on  the 
mantelshelf  to  reflect  in  miniature  the  objects 
contained  in  the  room  "  ! 

But  there  was  one  ornament  for  walls  and 
mantelpieces,  even  in  the  state-rooms,  that  had 
an  unheard  of  vogue.  This  was  porcelain,  either 
Chinese  porcelain  or  its  imitation  in  "  Dutch 
porcelain,"  that  is  to  say.  Delft  faience.  One  must 
see  certain  prints  by  Daniel  Marot  or  Le  Pautre 
to  realise  to  what  heights  this  craze  could  be 
carried.  Here  is  a  chimney-piece  carrying  at 
each  end  of  its  shelf  a  large  vase  in  shape  of  a 
horn  and  a  bottle ;    in  the  middle,  on  a  whatnot 


THE    PORCELAIN    CRAZE     41 

with  four  diminishing  shelves,  rises  a  pyramid  of 
twenty-two  pieces  of  porcelain.  This  way  of 
decorating  chimney-pieces  had  become  so  habitual 
that  d'Aviler  in  his  jyaiU  cV Architecture  wrote; 
"  The  height  of  a  chimney-shelf  should  be  six  feet, 
so  as  to  prevent  the  vases  that  may  be  arranged 
on  it  from  being  knocked  over."  And  we  know 
from  childhood,  since  we  read  it  in  Riquct  a  la 
Houppe,  how  the  stupidity  of  a  princess  of  those 
days  showed  itself.  "  She  either  made  no  answer 
to  what  she  was  asked,  or  said  something  stupid. 
And  she  was  so  clumsy  to  boot,  that  she  could 
not  have  ranged  four  bits  of  china  on  a  chimney- 
shelf  without  breaking  one  of  them,  nor  drunk  a 
glass  of  water  without  spilling  half  of  it  over  her 
clothes."  In  rooms  decorated  after  the  Chinese 
style  it  went  further  still.  Cups  alternately  with 
saucers  standing  on  edge,  on  tiny  brackets  or 
shelves,  enframed  panels  lacquered  in  the  Chinese 
fashion ;  others  were  ranged  over  the  lintels  of 
the  doors ;  all  the  hnes  of  a  chimney-piece  were 
laid  out  with  them  ;  one  such  chimney-piece  was 
adorned  with  more  than  two  hundred  and  twenty 
bits  of  china.  Did  not  the  Due  dAumont,  if 
Saint-Simon  may  be  believed,  even  take  it  into 
his  head  one  day  to  have  a  cornice  run  all  round 
his  stable,  which  he  covered  with  rare  pieces  of 
porcelain? 

It  is  perhaps  worth  while  to  lay  stress  on  this 
counterpart  to  the  majestic  decorative  art  inspired 
by  Le  Brun,  for  we  are  too  much  accustomed  to 
judge  from  the  dead  and  empty  halls  of  unused 


42    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

and  ravaged  palaces,  or  from  pieces  of  furniture 
displayed  in  isolation  in  museums  and  collections. 
Now  that  we  have  a  comprehensive  idea  of  our 
style,  and  of  the  atmosphere,  so  to  say,  in  which 
it  was  shaped,  we  shall  endeavour  to  analyse  more 
precisely  its  distinguishing  characteristics,  con- 
sidering more  especially  furniture  of  the  less 
elaborate  kinds. ^ 

The  Louis  XIV  style,  perhaps  chiefly  because 
it  had  an  eye  on  economy,  abused  the  straight 
line  in  furniture.  The  style  that  came  after  did 
not  avoid  straight  lines,  it  even  emphasises  them 
by  a  multiplication  of  parallels,  with  a  slightly 
tiresome  insistence,  for  example,  in  cupboards 
with  large  horizontal  cornices.^  In  any  case  they 
are  not  detracted  from  and  broken  by  a  host  of 
artifices,  as  they  will  be  in  the  Louis  XV  style, 
where  this  later  style  consents  to  retain  them. 
These  straight  lines  sometimes  give  a  certain 
impression  of  dryness,^  but  on  the  whole  this  is 
much  less  frequent  than  in  the  Louis  XIII  or 
the  Empire  style. 

Curved  lines  were  also  very  much  employed, 
even  before  the  style  began  to  incline  to  the 
Regency  lines.  The  Louis  XIV  curve  is  simple, 
firm  and  concise,  with  short  radius;  it  never 
shows  that  species  of  loosened  languor,  so  to  say, 

1  A  great  number  of  Louis  XIV  motives  continued  to  be  used 
in  the  Regency  period,  and  we  shall  accordingly  borrow  in  this 
chapter  examples  from  the  furniture  of  the  succeeding  period. 

2  See  the  cupboards  in  Figs.  4  and  7,  and  especially  in  Fig.  9. 

3  See  the  stretchers  of  the  table  in  Fig.  23,  and  also  the 
stretcher  of  the  arm-chair  in  Fig.  35. 


RIGHT    ANGLES  43 

which  gives  so  much  charm  to  the  long  curves 
of  the  Louis  XV  style.  The  table  in  Fig._22^is 
v^holly  typical  in  this  respect.  Except  in  its 
rectangular  top  it  does  not  present  a  single 
straight  Hne.  We  must  needs  recognise  that  in 
this  example  the  line  is  confused,  too  much 
broken  up  mto  short  curves,  and  that  this  gives  an 
effect  of  heaviness.  The  most  successful  pieces  of 
this  period  offer  a  very  harmonious  combination 
of  straight  lines  and  curves,  from  which  there 
results  a  sturdy  firmness  that  does  not  prevent 
elegance.^ 

Right  angles  are  not  often  evaded  or  softened  ?^ 
Like  the  regular  courses  in  a  wall  of  well  squared 
cut  stone,  they  express  ideas  of  security,  solidity, 
preciseness,  of  abstract  reason  also  ;  here  we  may 
perceive  the  sign  of  the  "  geometrical  spirit "  of 
which  Pascal  spoke.  Boileau  had  a  mind  full  of 
right  angles,  Descartes  also,  and  Corneille,  and 
the  great  Arnauld,  and  Poussin  too.  Look  at 
Poussin's  portrait  of  himself  in  the  Louvre  ;  was 
it  by  mere  chance  that  the  background  is  cut  up 
by  several  right  angles? 

These  perpendiculars  form  the  boundaries  of 
panels,  which  others  still  subdivide  into  smaller 
panels ;  and  this  is  another  characteristic  feature 
of    an  epoch  that  loves  clearly    defined    hmits, 

1  Good  examples  of  this  harmony  may  be  seen  in  the  wood 
panels  in  Figs.  I  and  2,  the  cupboard  in  Fig.  6,  the  arm-chair  of 
Fig.  32,  the  commode  in  Fig.  19,  and  above  all  the  magnificent 
cupboard  of  Fig.  10  and  the  very  handsome  table  of  Fig.  21. 

2  See  the  numerous  right  angles  in  the  cupboards  of  Figs. 
4,  5,  6,  the  arm-chair  of  Fig.  32,  etc.,  etc. 


44    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

equal  subdivisions,  tragedies  whose  five  acts  never 
overlap  one  another,  alexandrines  without  carry- 
over, strongly  divided  at  each  hemistich  and 
moving  two  by  two  "like  oxen,"  discourses  in 
three  clearly  marked  and  defined  heads,  all 
equally  developed  and  separated  by  unmistakable 
transitions.  This  subdivision  into  panels,  "  com- 
partments "  as  they  were  called,  is  often  a 
complete  decoration  in  itself. 

The  panel  in  its  early  shape  is  a  simple 
rectangle  with  a  plain  surface  ;  the  "  diamond 
point"  decoration  of  the  Louis  XIII  style  is 
done  away  with.^  An  early  enrichment  consists 
in  hollowing  out  the  four  angles;^  often  the 
hollowed  space  is  decorated  with  a  motive  carved 
in  relief,  a  little  rosette  or  the  like.^  Sometimes 
the  panel  is  only  hollowed  at  the  top  corners.'' 

Next  comes  the  panel  with  semicircular  top, 
the  diameter  of  the  curve  of  the  semicircle  being 
less  than  the  side  of  the  rectangle  to  which  it  is 
applied,^  which  gives  a  semicircle,  the  diameter 
of  which  is  produced  both  ways  in  two  straight 
lines.  The  four  right  angles  of  the  panel  remain. 
This  is,  especially  in  joiners'  work,  one  of  the 
fundamental  and  most  characteristic  shapes  of 
the  style,  and  is  found  everywhere.  The  archi- 
tects of  the  period,  whose  nomenclature  was  full 
of  a  genial  simplicity,  called  this  a  "  panel  rounded 

1  Lower  part  of  cupboard,  Fig.  4 ;  buffet  in  Fig.  12,  etc. 

2  Door  panels  of  cupboard.  Fig,  7. 

3  Cupboards,  Figs.  3  and  6. 

4  Buffet,  Fig.  47. 

5  Cupboards,  tigs.  4,  6,  7,  etc. 


PANEL    SHAPES  45 

at  the  top."  The  whole  facade  of  a  piece  of 
furniture  may  be  of  this  shape  ;  we  then  have 
a  semicircular  pediment.'  The  panel  may  be 
rounded  at  top  and  bottom.^  Let  us  suppose  a 
square  panel  arched  in  this  fashion  on  each  side; 
this  gives  a  very  happy  motive,^  known  as  a 
"square  rounded  on  its  faces,"  which  is  no  other 
than  a  Gothic  framing,  very  common  in  the 
thirteenth  century :  of  this  kind  are  the  famous 
quadrilobate  medallions  that  figure  on  the  sub- 
basement  of  the  doorway  of  Amiens  cathedral. 
It  is  agreeable  enough  to  see  the  men  of  the 
seventeenth  century  thus  unconsciously  re-dis- 
covering the 

.    .    .    fade  gonst  des  ornemens  gotluqttcs 
Ces  monstres  odjeiix  des  siecles  ignorans. 
Que  de  la  barbaric  out  produit  les  torrens, 

as  Moliere  says  in  detestable  verses.  This  me- 
dallion, when  simplified  by  the  suppression  of  the 
corner  angles,"*  gives  the  quatrefoil,  which  is 
pure  Gothic  also. 

The  combination  of  the  semicircle  with  the 
hollowed  angles  gives  another  very  common  and 
highly  typical  motive,^  which  for  convenience  we 
may  call  the  cintre  a  rcssaut.  This  line  is  also 
found  in  the  pediments  of  cupboards  and  side- 
boards,^ at  the  top  of  the  backs  of  certain  leather 

1  Buffet,  Fig.  12  ;  clocks,  Figs.  56  and  57. 

2  See   the    narrow  sunk    panels  flanking    the   doors  of  the 
cupboard  in  Fig.  5. 

3  Cupboard,  Fig.  II. 

4  Cupboard,  Fig.  5. 

5  Cupboards,  Fig.  8,  and  under-cupboard,  Fig.  14. 

6  Sideboard,  Fig.  48. 


46    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

chairs,  and  in  the  stretchers  of  the  tables  and 
seats. ^  Elongated  in  elevation,^  or  on  the  contrary 
flattened  out,^  modified  by  the  greater  importance 
given  now  to  the  arch/  now  to  the  hollowed 
angles,*  repeated  at  the  two  ends  of  a  panel,^ 
duplicated  back  to  back,''  repeated  four  times,^ 
or  combined  with  a  simple  semicircle  ^  to  form  a 
medallion,  this  motive  lends  itself  to  a  host  of 
different  uses.  We  shall  see  presently  how  it 
evolved  in  the  Regency  period.  There  is  another 
shape  fairly  frequent  in  panels  :  it  has  a  hollow 
br  re-entrant  semicircle  at  the  bottom  corre- 
sponding and  parallel  to  the  semicircle  at  the 
top.^° 

Besides  the  rectangular  panel  the  circular  or 
oval  panel"  was  also  often  employed,  forming  a 
medallion.  Let  us  note,  in  short,  that  as  the 
Louis  XIV  style  was  addicted  to  parallel  lines, 
the  shape  of  a  panel  or  compartment  was  often 
determined  by  that  of  the  next  door  panel, 
which  it  complies  with  when  the  other  is  the 
more  important." 

The  division  of  a  surface  into  panels  may  have 

1  Arm-chair,  Fig.  32,  and  chair,  Fig.  38. 

2  Cupboard,  Fig.  6,  the  panels  at  the  top  of  the  doors. 

3  Cupboard,  Fig.  5. 

4  Cupboard,  Fig.  8,  the  top  part. 

5  Same  cupboard,  the  lower  part. 

6  Cupboard,  Fig.  9. 

7  Cupboards,  Fig.  5. 

8  Cupboard,  Fig.  5. 

9  Cupboard,  Fig.  46. 

10  Under-cupboard,  Fig.  14. 

11  See  the  woodwork  in  Fig.  I  and  the  buffet,  Fig.  47. 

12  Cupboards,  Figs.  4  and  5  (curious  small  compartments  of 
ogee  shape),  and  Figs.  9  and  lb. 


MOULDINGS  47 

no  other  intention  than  to  achieve  ornamenta- 
tion, as  in  elaborate  wainscoting,  but  it  is 
different  in  the  case  of  the  doors  of  cupboards. 
Here  it  is  essential,  the  traverses  serving  to  give 
the  solidity  and  firmness  that  the  uprights  would 
not  suffice  to  ensure,  unless  the  joiner  made  them 
of  an  excessive  thickness. 

Panels  are  edged  definitely  with  mouldings 
that  serve  to  define  their  shape.  Louis  XIV 
moulding  is  emphatic,  strongly  expressed,  in  high 
relief ;  it  produces  strong  effects  of  shadow, 
throwing  into  vivid  contrast  the  blackness  of  its 
hollows  and  the  lights  of  its  projections ;  it  is 
often  very  complicated  and  occasionally  heavy, 
but  it  is  never  flabby.  Originating  in  the  heavy 
mouldings  of  Louis  XIII,  it  moves  always  in  the 
direction  of  suppleness  and  refinement.  There 
are  arm-chairs  of  this  period  which  have  mould- 
ings, especially  on  the  arms,  as  handsome  as  the 
most  perfect  of  the  middle  ages  or  the  Louis  XV 
period. 

Its  elements  are  wholly  classic,  of  course  : 
fillets  and  quandrantals,  doucines  and  scotias ; 
though  it  continually  employs  the  bee  de  corbin 
or  crow's  bill  motive,  which  comes  from  Gothic 
art,  for  framing. 

In  the  proper  aesthetic  scheme  of  furniture, 
the  part  played  by  mouldings  is  to  mark  the 
different  elements  of  its  construction  by  bringing 
out  their  function  in  the  piece  as  a  whole.  For 
example,  horizontal  mouldings  emphasise  the 
division  of  cupboards  into  sections,  whether  they 


48     LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

are  in  two  parts  ^  or  have  a  drawer.^  But  at  the 
period  we  are  now  dealing  with,  pre-occupations 
as  to  the  enframing,  which  is  always  so  striking, 
and  as  to  symmetry,  often  carry  the  day  over 
this  wholesome  logic.  A  whole  cupboard  facade 
may  be  framed  round  like  a  picture,^  while  the 
division  between  the  drawer  section  and  that  of 
the  cupboard  proper  will  not  be  indicated;  a 
very  high  moulding  will  run  all  round  the  cup- 
board, carried  along,  in  the  lower  part,  across 
and  over  uprights  and  traverses  to  correspond 
symmetrically  with  the  cornice/ 

This  subdivision  into  panels,  and  this  use  of 
mouldings  may  well  suffice,  by  the  play  of  the 
light  upon  the  various  planes  and  the  mouldings, 
to  create  an  intensely  decorative  result.  Two 
handsome  cupboards,  reproduced  here,  prove 
this.5 

But  most  frequently  carving  is  brought  into  the 
ornamenting  of  massive  pieces,  and  bronzes  are 
placed  on  marquetry  or  veneered  furniture.  We 
must  glance  rapidly  at  the  favourite  motives  of 
these  two  methods  under  Louis  XIV. 

The  simplest  motives  of  all,  made  up  of  lines 
only,  are  the  elementary  curves,  which  may  be 
named  the  C-shaped  curve  (known  in  the  seven- 
teenth century  as  anse  de  pamer,  "  basket- 
handle  "),  and  the  S-shaped  curve,  which  all  the 

1  Fig.  3. 

2  Figs.  4,  5,  7,  9,  etc. 

3  Fig.  II. 

4  Figs.  3,  4,  5,  9,  etc 

5  Fig.  9  and  especially  10. 


DECORATIVE    MOTIVES     49 

styles  employed  more  or  less.  These  end  in  two 
little  crooks,  and  are  frequently  lightened  with  a 
little  acanthus  motive.  The  two  wooden  panels 
of  Figs.  I  and  2  show  them  to  us  employed  and 
combined  in  many  ways  :  the  C  curves  facing 
and  crossed  forming  the  elements  of  a  rosette;^ 
two  S  shapes  touchmg  at  one  of  their  curves, 
enframing  a  sprig  of  foliage ;  -  four  C  shapes 
back  to  back,  forming  a  motive  in  the  form  of  a 
cross,^  etc.  When  two  S-shaped  curves  are  crossed 
about  one-third  from  their  lower  end,  and  their 
tips  touch  below,  or  even  melt  into  one  con- 
tinuous line,  we  have  the  bonded  A  boucle,  or 
several,  one  below  the  other,  diminishing  and 
ending  in  a  floret  or  a  campane*  form  the  natte 
or  tressCy  one  of  the  most  usual  shapes  of  chute* 
Among  motives  for  backgrounds,  the  favourites 
are  lozenges  with  florets  =  or  with  dots,^  and 
nattes? 

Motives  taken  from  the  human  figure  were, 
of  course,  only  used  in  decorating  very  costly 
and  luxurious  pieces.  Allegory,  and  mythological 
allegory  in  especial,  as  is  well  known,  is  one  of 
the  most  inveterate  habits  of  mind  among  the 
men  of  the  seventeenth  century  :  whether  poets 
or  no,  historical  painters  or  artists  in  other  styles, 
they  can  no  longer  express  themselves,   hardly 

1  Fig.  1,  the  central  rosette. 

2  Fig,  2,  enframement  of  the  Jicnr-dc-lis. 

3  Fig.  2,  the  small  centre  panel, 

4  Drawer  and  legs  of  table,  Fig.  58. 

5  Frieze  of  table  in  Fig.  2r. 

6  Frieze  of  tables  in  Figs  22  and  59 ;  chairs.  Figs.  71  and  72. 

7  Fig.  6. 

D 


so    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

even  think,  without  mTthology  breaking  in ;  and 
for  everybody,  as  for  Boileau, 

Chaque  veriti  devient  line  divinite, 

Minerve  est  la  prudence,  et  Venus  la  bcante  .  .  . 

L'n  01  age  terrible  aux  yctix  dcs  matelots, 

Cest  Neptune  en  courioux  qui  gonrniande  ks  flats, 

A  great  deal  of  furniture,  especially  that  made 
for  the  King,  is  accordingly  allegorical.  Here 
w^e  may  see  Louis  XIV  in  the  guise  of  Hercules 
or  Apollo,  and  Maria  Theresa  as  Diana,  on  two 
cabinets,  of  which  one  is  the  Temple  of  Glory 
and  the  other  the  Temple  of  Virtue ;  at  Ver- 
sailles there  is  a  Cabinet  of  Peace,  and  a  Cabinet 
of  War,  etc.,  etc. 

But  what  is  much  more  common  is  the  use  of 
masks  and  mascarons.  The  difference  between 
them  is  that  a  mask  is  a  head  in  half  relief,  seen 
full  face,  but  a  noble  and  beautiful  head,  while 
a  inascaron  is  a  '-grotesque,"  a  ''head  made 
according  to  whimsy,"  in  which  elements  of 
vegetable  life  are  mingled  with  the  human 
features,  and  most  frequently  it  is  the  face  of  a 
satyr.  The  beard  of  this  satyr  is  often  long, 
plaited,  and  forms  a  chute.  Thus,  in  the 
ornamentation  of  the  small  gilt  table,  reproduced 
in  Fig.  22,  the  female  head  that  adorns  the 
middle  of  the  frieze  is  a  mask ; '  the  satyrs'  heads 
on  the  legs  are  mascarons.  A  mask  or  mascaron 
is  often  crowned  and  in  a  fashion  aureoled  with 
a  palm-leaf  ornament  raying  out  (to  which  the 
fontange  has  a  strong  resemblance),  whose  lobes 

I  So  also  the  fine  bronzes  on  the  sides  of  the  commode, 
Fig.  17. 


DECORATIVE    MOTIVES     51 

are  decorated  in  various  ways.  This  same  palm 
leaf  may  also  form  a  collarette  below  the  mask. 

The  animal  kingdom  is  largely  put  under 
contribution,  "  noble  animals,"  of  course:  there 
are  lion's  heads,^  lion's  spoils — from  the  Nemean 
Hon,  lion's  paws,  lion's  claws ;  ^  ram's  heads,  ram's 
horns  more  or  less  conventionalised,^  cloven 
stag's  hoofs.^  Then  we  have  the  fantastic  animals 
of  mythology,  dolphins,  sphinxes,  sea-horses, 
grilhns,  etc.  The  escutcheons  on  the  keyholes 
of  simple  cupboards  and  buffets,  made  of  iron, 
shaped  and  modelled  with  the  file  and  then 
roughly  engraved,  often  allow  us  to  recognise 
the  old  motive  of  the  winged  dragon,  though 
very  degenerate,^  and  in  other  cases  the  dolphin.^ 
And  the  scallop  shell  is  almost  ubiquitous.''  It  is 
Saint  James's  shell,  the  pilgrim's  shell,  but  we 
meet  it  in  a  hundred  modifications ;  between 
this  and  the  palmette  there  exists  every  imagin- 
able intermediate  shape.  It  is  convex,  showing 
its  outer  and  not  its  inner  side,  but  the  edges  are 
turned  over  outwards. 

In  the  vegetable  kingdom  the  acanthus  is 
almost  the  only  subject  sufficiently  classical  to  be 
employed,  but  what  variety  of  resources  does  it 

1  Ornament  (known  as  a  niiceaii)  on  the  base  of  the  commode, 
Fig.  54. 

2  Feet  of  cupboard,  Fig  45. 

3  The  ram's  horn  motive,  much  conventionalised  and  modified, 
can  be  recognised  on  each  side  of  the  mask  on  the  table,  Fig.  22. 

4  Legs  of  table,  Fig.  22,  etc. 

5  Cupboard,  Fig.  9,  etc. 

6  Base  of  cupboard,  Fig.  14. 

7  Base  of  cupboard.  Fig.  14;  chair,  Fig.  39. 


52    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

not  ofier  to  the  artist  in  ornament !  It  bends 
itself  to  everything,  takes  every  shape  :  rinceaux, 
stems,  florets,  rosettes,  croziers,  boiicles.  The 
palmette  has  now^  only  very  distant  links  with  a 
palm  leaf ;  it  is  made  with  ribbons,  or  cut  out  of 
leather  rather  than  anything  else,  and  anyhow  it 
is  often  called  a  queue  de  paon,'^  "  peacock's  tail." 
We  find  also  a  water  lily  leaf,  especially  in  friezes 
of  gilt  bronze,  twigs  of  oak  or  laurel  or  ohve, 
lilies  and  sunflowers,^  which  owe  their  inclusion 
to  their  symbolism.  Garlands,  known  in  the 
seventeenth  century  as  "  festoons,"^  were  made  up 
of  fruits,  and  roses,  and  narcissi,  and  flowers  of  no 
clear  species.  If  in  the  decorations  made  with 
marquetry  of  coloured  woods  we  find  a  little 
more  variety  and  realism,  tulips,  tuberoses, 
anemones,  it  is  because  here  we  are  dealing  with 
an  imitation  of  Dutch  models.-*  But  where  we 
find  every  kind  of  beast — birds,  lizards,  butter- 
flies, caterpillars,  insects — and  many  different 
flowers  represented  "  in  natural  colours,"  is  on 
tables  of  stone  mosaic,  precisely  because  in  this 
case  the  realism  is  a  regular  "  tour  de  force,"  and 
so  claimed  as  a  beauty. 

There  remain  the  ornaments  inspired  by  things 
made  by  man.  The  greatest  number  are  again 
borrowed  from  architecture.     Since  the  middle 


1  Fig.  17,  exterior  angles  of  drawers. 

2  Fig.  I,  small  sunflower  in  the  middle  of  the  rosette. 

3  Boileau  is  speaking  of  garlands  when  he  says,  "  cc  iicsoiitqiic 
fcstoiis,  cc  lie  soiit  qn'iistriigaUs."  As  for  the  astragales  he 
merely  threw  them  in  for  luck,  for  the  sake  of  the  rhyme. 

4  Commode,  Fig.  18. 


ARCHITECTURAL    SHAPES  53 

ages,  furniture  has  never  ceased  to  imitate  a 
house  or  a  church.  This  is  true  in  a  less  degree 
under  Louis  XIV  than  under  Louis  XIII,  less 
under  the  Bourbons  than  under  the  Valois,  but 
still  the  imitation  is  there ;  it  was  in  the  Louis 
XV  period  that  it  came  to  a  stop  for  a  time. 
At  the  outset  of  the  reign,  there  was  still  many 
a  cabinet  crowned  with  balusters  and  trophies 
like  the  Palace  of  Versailles,  that  carried  eng-aged 
pillars  on  its  facade,  or  pilasters  with  Corinthian 
capitals,  and  niches  for  statuary.  Cupboards 
were  topped  with  great  projecting  cornices,  like 
the  Strozzi  Palace  or  the  Farnese  Palace ;  '^  but 
there  was  a  clear  and  increasing  tendency  to 
abandon  these  practices.  The  pillar  vanished, 
and  no  hint  of  it  is  left  save  the  flutings  that 
adorn  the  rounded  arrises  of  the  early  commodes.^ 
The  baluster,  on  the  other  hand,  of  round  or 
square  section,  was  in  high  favour  for  legs  of 
tables  and  seats.^  The  console  was  employed 
almost  everywhere,  both  as  a  support  ^  and  as  a 
mere  ornament. ^  It  was  often  extravagantly 
wrenched  out  of  shape,  as  for  example  by  the 
unhappy  complication  of  making  the  two  scrolls 
in  which  it  terminates,  or  the  curves  that  recall 

1  Observe  the  ressaults  and  decrochements  of  the  cornices,  so 
beloved  of  baroque  architecture,  in  the  top  of  the  cupboard  in 
Fig.  10  and  the  buffet  in  Fig.  II. 

2  Figs.  17  and  19. 

3  Table,  Fig.  21;  bureau,  Fig.  2/;  arm-chair.  Fig.  31;  chair, 
Fig.  3     etc. 

4  Arms  of  arm-chairs,  Figs.  72  and  73;  legs  of  arm-chairs, 
Figs.  32,  61,  62. 

5  Stretcher  of  table.  Fig.  22,  and  of  the  arm-chair.  Fig.  31, 


54    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

the  scrolls,  move  in  the  same  instead  of  in 
opposite  directions.^  Two  of  these  unnatural 
consoles  placed  end  to  end  originated  the 
bracket-shaped  accolade  found  in  table  legs  and 
in  the  cross  pieces  between  the  legs  of  simplified 
seats. ^  Modillions  and  denticules  appear  under 
certain  cornices.  The  Doric  triglyphs,  so 
common  on  Louis  XVI  furniture,  were  used  by 
Boulle  and  his  rivals  ;  they  were  known  roundly 
as  "  ciiisses  et  canaux.'^'' 

Among  other  objects  that  furnished  orna- 
mental motives  ancient  weapons  must  be  men- 
tioned :  the  glaive,  bow  and  quiver,  naval  buckler, 
the  BcEotian  helmet ;  mythological  attributes  : 
tridents,  caducei,  thunderbolts,  scythes,  all  the 
equipment  of  the  gods ;  trophies  of  musical 
instruments,  fishing,  hunting,  and  agricultural 
implements  :  but  all  these  are  much  less  em- 
ployed than  in  the  eighteenth  century.  Lastly, 
the  knot  of  ribbon,^  and  very  commonly  the 
motive  known  to  us  as  a  larnhreqiiin,  an 
imitation  of  a  strip  of  stuff  cut  with  deep 
hanging  scallops.  This  was  called  a  campane 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  a  single  one  of 
these  scallops,  shaped  like  the  panels  arrondis 
par  le  bout  described  above,  and  often  adorned 
with  fringe,  was  called  a  bout  de  campane. 
Boulle's^<22*;z^5  d^ applique  *  were  often  decorated 
with  large  bouts  de  campane  in  colours. 

1  Legs  of  chair,  Fig.  39,  etc. 

2  Table,  Fig.  26;  seats,  Figs.  34,  36,  etc. 

3  Table,  Fig.  21. 


SYMMETRY  5s 

Over  the  composition,  the  use,  and  the  hand- 
ling of  these  various  motives  there  presides  the 
sacrosanct  spirit  of  symmetry  ever  and  always. 
For  those  minds  and  those  eyes  that  have  the 
passion  for  regularity,  symmetry  with  reference  to 
a  vertical  axis  is  not  enough — they  demand  it 
with  reference  to  a  horizontal  axis  as  well.  We 
have  pointed  out  those  mouldings  on  cupboard 
bases  which  correspond  exactly  to  the  mouldings 
of  the  cornice.  Note  also  those  examples  of 
wood  panelling,  whose  top  is  identical  with  the 
bottom  (Figs,  i  and  2),  that  little  cupboard 
(Fig.  3),  which  might  very  comfortably  be  placed 
upside  down ;  and  again  those  table  legs  shaped 
like  a  bracket  on  end  (Fig.  26),  that  chair  back 
(Fig.  39),  whose  lower  traverse  has  the  same 
curve  as  the  upper  one.  The  Empire  period, 
however,  will  be  even  more  infatuated  with  these 
exact  counterpoises. 

As  for  colour  in  furniture,  it  seems  clear  that 
under  Louis  XIV  people's  eyes,  like  their  other 
senses,  were  less  fine,  less  sensitive  to  shocks  than 
in  the  days  of  Louis  XV,  or,  more  especially,  in 
the  days  of  Louis  XVL  We  have  already  seen 
that  the  magnificent  hangings  that  people  loved 
to  surround  themselves  with  were  often  of  bright 
colours,  and  very  glaring  colours,  set  against  each 
other  in  bands  or  compartments,  and  no  dis- 
cordancy was  shrunk  from.  Herewith  are  a  few 
examples. 

When  the  Abbe  d'Efl&at  died,  in  1698,  he  had 
in  his  flat    in   the    Arsenal   a   bed  whose   tour 


56    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

or  draperies  (curtains,  bonnes  graces^  scalloped 
hangings  round  the  top,  and  valances)  were  of 
violet  velvet,  and  the  inside  furnishings  (foot, 
head  and  counterpane)  of  yellow  satin.  In  the 
same  room  the  seats  were  covered,  some  in  violet 
velvet,  the  others  in  white  and  gold  brocade, 
with  one  finally  in  crimson  velvet.  The  colour 
called  aurore  was  high  in  favour  ;  according  to 
Furetiere,  it  was  "  a  certain  dazzling  golden 
yellow."  Here  is  what  it  was  matched  with. 
This  same  Abbe  d'EfEat  had  a  room,  the  chairs 
in  which  were  covered  with  Lyons  brocatelle, 
"aurora-coloured  with  red  flowers."  In  the 
Tuileries  there  was  a  hanging  of  aurora  and  green 
damask.  In  the  Chateau  du  Val  the  bench  seats 
in  the  King's  cabinet  were  aurora  Venetian  broca- 
telle flowered  in  green. 

[;,  Mme.  de  Maintenon  had  a  weakness  for  a 
combination  of  red  and  green.  Her  chamber  at 
Versailles  had  a  hanging  of  damask  with  crimson 
and  green  stripes;  her  bed  displayed  green  and 
gold  without  and  crimson  within ;  a  five-fold 
screen  had  three  green  and  two  red  leaves.  The 
seats  were  striped  red  and  green,  their  wooden 
parts  green  picked  out  in  gold.  Lastly,  here  is 
the  description  of  her  famous  "  niche  "  from  the 
Inventory  of  the  Crown  Furniture:  "An  oak 
niche,  five  feet  ten  inches  long  by  two  feet  ten 
inches  deep  and  eight  feet  and  a  half  high, 
furnished  inside  with  four  widths  of  red  damask 
and  three  widths  of  gold  and  green  damask, 
joined  with  a  narrow  gold  galoon  on  the  seams. 


COLOUR  ^^ 

and  outside  with  three  widths  of  gold  and  green 
damask  and  two  widths  and  a  stripe  of  red 
damask  similarly  joined  with  a  small  gold  galoon." 
Inside  it  there  was  a  rest-bed,  with  a  crimson 
coverlet  lined  with  green. 

Tables,  the  wooden  portions  of  seats,  and 
gueridons  were  all  to  match;  painted  red  and 
green  and  gold,  or  blue  and  gold  ;  lacquered  "in 
the  Chinese  fashion,"  or,  which  was  the  same 
thing,  "in  the  manner  of  porcelain,"  i.e.^  lac- 
quered white  with  blue  decoration  :  we  may 
figure  to  ourselves  furniture  something  like  the 
early  manner  of  Rouen  earthenware. 

But,  towards  the  close  of  the  reign  the  taste 
for  pure  soft  colour  appears  to  prevail  little  by 
little,  at  the  same  time  as  wood  panelling  begins 
in  many  homes  to  take  the  place  of  the  hangings 
of  bright-hued  stuffs.  Speaking  of  the  colour 
proper  for  painting  wainscoating,  the  architect 
dAviler  wrote  in  1691,  "the  most  beautiful 
colour  is  white,  because  it  increases  the  light  and 
rejoices  the  eyes." 


The  technique  of  furniture  making  was  en- 
riched with  no  important  novelties  in  the  second 
half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  but  practices 
that  had  been  still  rare  about  1650  became  quite 
usual.  Such  were  the  gilding  of  wood,  veneering, 
marquetry,  the  upholstering  of  seats,  to  say 
nothing  of  royal  and  princely  caprices  like  furni- 
ture of  solid  silver. 


58    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

Our  master  joiners,  worthy  successors  to  the 
good  hiichiers  of  bygone  days,  had  for  a  long 
time  had  nothing  to  learn  when  they  were  given 
a  new  problem  to  solve — the  making  of  very 
large  cupboards.  So  well  did  they  acquit  them- 
selves, that  these  monumental  pieces  are  to-day 
carrying  on  their  loyal  service  in  provincial 
houses,  without  having  interrupted  them  for  a 
moment  during  more  than  two  centuries.  What 
furniture  of  the  present  day  can  look  forward 
to  such  a  destiny  ?  The  joiners  then  continued  to 
create  for  their  customers  of  moderate  means  these 
excellent  and  handsome  pieces  of  pure  carpentry 
work.  But  in  the  circles  where  people  plumed 
themselves  on  refinement  and  elegance,  there 
was  a  tendency  to  prefer  a  more  brilliant  surface 
decoration  in  furniture,  the  effect  of  colouring 
taking  the  place  of  the  effect  got  by  working  in 
relief. 

Furniture  of  gilded  wood,  or  rather  gilded  in 
part,  was  not  unknown  to  our  ancestors,  even  in 
the  fourteenth  century,  but  it  was  very  un- 
common down  to  the  seventeenth  century.  Italy, 
of  course,  that  motherland  of  every  kind  of 
magnificence,  was  the  first  to  think  of  full- 
gilding  the  bed,  seats,  tables,  frames,  candelabra, 
everything  in  short  in  a  state  chamber  that  was 
made  of  wood,  and  this  taste  did  not  fail  to  find 
its  way  into  France.  It  would  certainly  have 
been  a  dream  wish  of  Louis  XIV  to  have  furni- 
ture of  solid  gold ;  failing  which  he  had  silver, 
and,  later  on,   gilded  wood.      The   director  of 


FINE    GILDING  59 

gilding  at  the  Gobelins  was  an  important  person- 
age, le  Sieur  de  la  Baronniere.  Gilding  was  then 
carried  out  a  la  detrempe^  and  was  a  complicated 
affair.  First  of  all,  the  wood  was  treated  in  the 
same  way  as  that  in  which  panels  had  been  got 
ready  for  painting  pictures  in  the  days  before 
canvas.  To  begin  with,  it  was  coated  with  size, 
and  then  with  one  thin  layer  after  another  of 
biaJic,  whiting  melted  down  with  skin  glue,  then 
a  coat  of  yellow,  then  one  of  the  assiefte,  into 
whose  composition  there  entered  not  less  than 
six  or  seven  glutinous  materials  cunningly  com- 
pounded ;  and  then  last  of  all  leaf  gold  was  laid 
on,  and  nothing  remained  to  do  but  to  burnish 
it.  Furniture  was  silvered  also  :  the  throne  of 
Louis  XIV,  after  the  great  melting  down  of  his 
plate,  was  silvered  wood ;  and,  so  too  in  many 
cases  were  the  caryatides  or  termes  that  upheld 
the  tables  on  which  fine  cabinets  were  placed. 
This  gilding  of  carved  pieces  is  so  familiar  to  us 
that  an  effort  is  needed  to  understand  just  to 
what  degree  it  is  an  esthetic  heresy. 

It  is  a  heresy  characteristic  of  a  period  that 
preferred  richness,  whether  real  or  seeming,  of 
material  to  the  far  higher  kind  of  beauty  that 
the  work  of  the  tool  gave  to  materials  that  were 
already  beautiful  indeed,  but  with  no  intrinsic 
money  value,  materials  like  oak  and  walnut. 
Hence  came  veneering  and  marquetry  side  by 
side  with  gilding.  The  Louis  XIII  period  had 
known  an  intermediate  stage  between  solid  fur- 
niture of  joiners'  work  and  veneered  furniture. 


6o    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

This  was  seen  in  ebony  cabinets,  in  which  the 
precious  wood  was  glued  on  to  the  common 
wood,  but  in  sheets  of  sufficient  thickness  to  allow 
of  their  being  carved  in  bas-relief  and  lightly- 
moulded.  Veneering  made  its  appearance  at  the 
same  time.  Its  technique  has  never  changed, 
except  that  mechanical  processes  of  cutting  up 
wood  makes  it  possible  to-day  to  obtain  sheets  of 
much  greater  thinness.  But  by  itself  veneering 
does  not  give  enough  richness ;  and  recourse  was 
had  to  marquetry. 

Wood  marquetry^  was  not  carried  out  in  the 
same  way  as  it  is  to-day.  The  panel  to  be 
decorated  was  first  of  all  covered  completely 
with  the  wood  intended  for  the  background,  and 
next,  the  artist  cut  out  with  penknife  or  burin 
the  place  for  the  decorative  motive,  the  various 
parts  of  which  were  shaped  with  a  fret-saw  and 
then  glued  in  their  proper  places.  Without  being 
very  extensive,  the  range  of  colours  at  the  disposal 
of  the  ebeniste — the  word  came  into  current  use 
precisely  when  that  austere  wood  ebony  went 
out  of  fashion — already  was  of  a  certain  richness. 
Almond  and  box  gave  him  yellows,  holly  a 
pure  white  ;  certain  pearwoods  red  ;  walnut  all 
the  browns  ranging  to  black ;  Saint  Lucia  wood 
a  pinkish  grey.  And  he  could  colour  his  wood  in 
graded  browns  by  "shading"  it  with  fire. 

Finding   these  colours  dull,   the  ouvriers  en 

I  Boulle  made  use  of  it  at  the  same  time  as  marquetry  with 
shell  and  metals.  In  the  Louvre  there  is  a  cupboard  by  him, 
decorated  with  fine  bouquets  of  flowers  in  vases,  made  of 
marquetry  in  wood  on  a  ground  of  tortoise-shell. 


BOULLE'S    TECHNIQUE     6i 

bois  dc  rapport  devised  the  plan,  an  atrocious 
one  from  the  point  of  view  of  technique,  and 
open  to  discussion  as  regards  beauty,  of  caUing  in 
other  materials,  such  as  brass  and  pewter,  which 
had  already  been  used  (like  bone,  ivory  and 
mother  of  pearl)  for  inlaying,  and  especially  as 
fillets  to  outhne  compartments ;  tortoise-shell, 
and  lastly  transparent  and  colourless  horn,  painted 
in  vivid  colours  on  the  back.  These,  with  gilded 
bronze  in  the  shape  of  appliques,  were  the 
resources  of  the  '•  palette,"  if  we  may  risk  the 
phrase,  of  Andre-Charles-Boulle.  He  used  also 
fine  stones,  though  very  sparingly. 

His  method  of  worlang  was  as  follows.  The 
structure  and  frame  of  his  furniture  is  quite 
coarsely  made,  and  generally  of  deal.  On  this 
wood  he  glued  a  sheet  of  paper  rubbed  over  with 
red  or  black,  and  over  this  paper  the  various 
pieces  of  his  marquetry,  obtained  in  the  following 
way  :  if  he  intended  to  make  a  panel  in  which  a 
motive  of  rinceaiix  in  brass  should  show  on  a 
ground  of  tortoise-shell,  he  glued  hghtly  together 
a  sheet  of  copper,  a  sheet  of  tortoise-shell,  and 
the  sheet  of  paper  on  which  he  had  made  out  his 
design ;  he  then  sawed  out  the  whole  together, 
unfastened  them,  and  in  this  way  had  his  ground 
in  duplicate,  both  of  shell  and  brass,  and  his 
ornament  induphcate  also,  brass  and  tortoise-shell. 
He  then  glued  the  tortoise-shell  ground  and  the 
brass  ornament  on  his  wooden  foundation,  and 
last  of  all  the  bronze  appliques  were  afhxed.  He 
then  had  the  brass  ground  and  the  shell  orna- 


62    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

merits  left  unused,  and  with  these  he  made  a 
new  piece,  identical  in  design  with  the  first  one, 
but  with  the  reverse  combination  of  materials. 
This  second  piece,  less  valuable  than  the  first, 
was  called  the  counterpart,  de  conire-partie  ;  the 
first  was  said  to  be  de  premiere  partie.  Usualle 
a  piece  was  not  completely  either  one  or  the 
other,  but  elements  of  both  kinds  were  combined 
in  the  work. 

Unhappily  there  is  no  solidity  in  it.  Metals 
do  not  take  kindly  to  glue,  and  all  these  hetero- 
geneous materials  behave  in  different  ways  in 
heat  and  damp.  These  pieces  therefore  demand 
continual  restorations,  and  are  not  even  to  be 
used:  they  are  simply  for  museums. 

To  add  the  last  touches  to  their  sumptuous- 
ness,  and  give  them  at  the  same  time  that 
allegorical  significance  which  was  so  appreciated 
in  his  day,  Boulle  added  to  these  pieces  appliques 
of  gilt  bronze,  often  admirable  at  every  point  for 
their  casting,  their  chasing  and  their  gilding 
alike.  Some  distinction  must  be  made  in  these 
bronzes.  If  we  examine  them  carefully,  we  see 
that  some  of  them  are  ornaments  pure  and 
simple,  while  others  serve  to  strengthen  the 
piece,  to  protect  it  from  being  knocked  about, 
and  to  resist  the  strain  and  play  of  the  wood. 
For  example,  the  sort  of  square  pieces  at  the 
angles  of  doors  have  their  use ;  they  serve  to 
reinforce  the  juncture  of  the  upright  and  the 
traverse,  metal  frames  take  the  place  of  the 
useful  projections  made  by  the  mouldings  used 


VERNIS    MARTIN  63 

by  the  joiner  cabinet-makers.  Other  bronzes 
piay  the  part  of  braces.  Once  admitting  the 
principle  of  these  superadded  ornaments,  it  was 
a  wholesome  and  logical  notion  to  make  them 
contribute  to  the  solidity  of  the  piece  ;  we  shall 
see  this  acted  on,  and  much  better,  by  the 
cabinet-makers  of  the  Regency  style.  But  at 
bottom  it  was  a  throwing  back  of  several  centuries 
to  the  methods  of  the  unskilled  hutchers  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  who  did  not  know  how  to 
put  their  coffers  together  strongly  and  solidly, 
and  so  clamped  their  boards  in  position  by  means 
of  iron  braces. 

We  have  seen  how  the  taste  for  bright  colours 
led  to  the  painting  of  many  pieces  of  furniture ; 
and  the  admiration  lavished  on  the  lacquers  of 
the  Far  East,  and  the  desire  to  copy  them  or 
simply  to  imitate  them,  ended  in  the  discovery  of 
the  process  of  lacquering.  Foucquet  and  Mazarin 
already  had  furniture  ''of  the  Chinese  fashion," 
but  a  native  of  Liege,  called  Dagly,  invented  a 
kind  of  lacquer  of  great  brilliancy  and  sohdity, 
a  discovery  that  opened  the  doors  of  the  Gobelins 
to  him,  and  this  was  known  as  the  "  vernis  des 
Gobelins."  At  the  close  of  the  reign  the  staff  of 
the  factory  included  a  "Directeur  des  ouvrages 
de  la  Chine,"  and  great  efforts  were  made  to 
imitate  black  and  gold  lacquer  ware,  which  was 
to  be  achieved  a  little  later,  in  exquisite  per- 
fection, by  the  celebrated  Martin. 


CHAPTER    II;    PANELLED 
FURNITURE,    BEDS    AND 
TABLES 

The  group  of  panelled  furniture  was  augmented 
during  the  period  of  the  Louis  XIV  style  by 
very  important  items,  the  great  cupboard  in  one 
piece,  the  sideboard  cupboard,  the  dresser-side- 
board, the  under-cupboard,  the  bookcase,  andthe 
commode.  On  the  other  hand,  the  coffer  was 
packed  off  into  garrets  by  the  city  folk,  and  was 
only  made  now  for  country  people ;  and  the 
cabinet,  which  taken  all  in  all  and  in  its  origin, 
was  merely  a  costly  coffer  elaborated  and  mounted 
on  a  wall  table,  disappeared  for  good. 

These  births  and  deaths,  so  to  speak,  arise 
from  a  great  change  in  manners.  Down  to  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  our  fore- 
fathers' way  of  living  kept  traces  of  the  half 
nomad  existence  of  the  middle  ages,  those  times 
when,  for  instance,  a  man  of  rank,  the  lord  of 
three  separate  chateaux,  had  only  one  set  of 
furniture  for  all  three,  and  took  everything  he 
possessed  with  him  when  he  went  from  one  to 
the  other.  His  possessions  were  so  few,  and  it 
would  have  been  so  unwise  to  leave  anything 
behind  that  could  be  pillaged !  Pieces  of  furni- 
ture therefore  that  were  meant  as  receptacles 
(what  we  call  panelled  furniture),  were  small  and 

64 


CHANGING    MANNERS      65 

sufficiently  portable  to  be  loaded  on  to  a  pack- 
horse.  Hence  the  persistence  of  the  coffer,  so 
inconvenient  in  itself ;  hence  the  quite  small 
cupboard  of  the  sixteenth  century,  made  in  two 
parts,  one  on  top  of  the  other,  which  merely 
became  larger,  without  change  of  structure,  in 
the  Louis  XIII  period,  and  hence  too  the  handles 
to  be  seen  on  the  sides  of  so  many  coffers  and 
even  of  some  cupboards. 

But  under  Louis  XIV  affairs  were  more 
stationary  and  settled  ;  people  moved  less 
readily  from  place  to  place,  even  though  it  was 
easier  to  do  so,  and  they  had  infinitely  more 
things  to  lock  away,  clothes,  linen,  etc.,  than  the 
preceding  generations.  And  so  large  furniture 
makes  its  appearance,  and  in  particular  the  large 
cupboard  with  one  or  two  doors.  There  had 
always  been  but  few  in  Paris,  and  no  trouble  had 
been  taken  to  make  handsome  things  of  them,^ 
because  the  habit  of  receiving  visitors  in  the 
bedchamber  was  given  up  earlier  in  Paris  than 
in  the  provinces,  because  in  Paris  people  had 
garde-robes,^  and  because  women  there  did  not 
take  so  much  pride  and  invest  a  large  proportion 
of  their  dowries  in  imposing  piles  of  blankets  and 
napkins.  But  among  the  ladies  of  provincial 
chateaux  and  business  circles,  and  farmers'  wives 
when  they  became  well  off,  the  great  cupboard, 
as  great  and   as   handsome   as  possible,  was  the 

1  And   in  consequence    the    few    that  did    exist    were  not 
preserved. 

2  At  Paris,  a  garde-robe  was  a  small  room  adjoining  the  bed- 
chamber ;  in  the  South  it  was  a  great  cupboard. 


66    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

essential  piece  of  furniture,  a  thing  they  were 
proud  to  have  and  to  display.  Many  of  these 
Louis  XIV  cupboards,  more  imposing  than 
attractive,  are  superb  in  their  lines  and  pro- 
portions, impeccable  in  their  architecture,  and 
without  rivals  in  decorative  value  in  a  huge 
room,  the  hall  of  a  chateau,  or  a  great  country 
mansion. 

Those   of  the  pure   Louis  XIV  style — which 

does  not  necessarily  mean  that  they  were  made 

before  171 5 — can  be  recognised  by  their  cornice, 

which  is  nearly  always  horizontal,  projects  very 

far,  and  shows  a  complicated  style  of  moulding ; 

by  their  rectangular  doors,  subdivided  into  flat 

panels  of  shapes  already  described,  and  lastly  by 

their  feet,  which  are  sometimes  flattened  balls  ^ 

or  burly  volutes  ^  or  lions  paws,^  when  they  have 

a  reversed  cornice  at  the  base  going  round  three 

sides ;  sometimes  they  are  merely  a  prolonging  of 

the  uprights,    cut  off  short.^     They   display  no 

carving,  or  but  very  little.     The  models  dating 

from  the  end  of  the  style,  and  "  approaching  the 

Regency  manner,"  as  the  dealers  say,  allow  a  few 

curves  in  their  structure  as  a   whole:  these  are 

the  most  agreeable  to  the  eye,  such  as  the  fine 

model  of  Fig.  10,  in  which  those  inflected  lines, 

which  are  yet  very  restrained,  come  in  so  happily 

to  soften  the  silhouette. 

Cupboards    from  the  different  provinces  had 

I  Figs.  4,  5,  7,  etc. 
2 -Figs.  10  and  5. 
3^  Fig.  45. 
4  Figs.  6  and  8. 


CUPBOARDS  67 

not  yet,  in  the  period  to  which  our  attention  is 
directed,  any  very  marked  differences.  What 
then  distinguished  the  furniture  of  one  region 
from  that  of  another  was  the  fact  that  the  new 
style  had  aheady  or  had  not  as  yet  arrived, 
rather  than  any  different  shades  in  the  style  itself. 
Let  us  note,  however,  that  the  cupboards  made 
in  the  South-west '  are  distinguished  by  their 
abundant  mouldings ;  those  of  Lorraine  ^  by  the 
somewhat  frequent  use  of  very  simple  marquetry 
or  inlay  in  coloured  woods,  and  the  quadrilobate 
medallion  ;  and  Normandy  cupboards  ^  by  their 
elegant  proportions,  their  delicate  carving  and 
their  classic  cornices  with  denticles. 

The  small  cupboard  in  two  parts  and  with  two 
volets  or  doors,  and  the  larger  one  with  four 
doors,  were  still  made,  but  less  and  less  often,  and 
they  almost  always  display  the  characteristics  of 
the  Louis  XIII  style.  Nevertheless  we  reproduce, 
in  Y\^.  3,  a  graceful  little  Norman  example  with 
two  doors,  a  bonnetiere  or  bonnet  cupboard  if 
you  like,  which  clearly  has  the  marks  of  the 
Louis  XIV  manner. 

Furniture  became  specialised  at  the  same  time 
as  the  rooms  in  flats.  Here  is  the  bas  cfannoire,'^ 
or  under-cupboard,  with  or  without  a  drawer  in 
the  upper  part,  the  name  of  which  recalls  its 
resemblance  to  the  lower  section  of  the  cupboards 

1  Figs.  4,  7,  and  9. 

2  Fig.  II.    Note  the  same  or  an  analogous  motive  on  cup- 
boards or  sideboards  from  Lorraine,  Figs.  46,  49  and  57. 

3  Fig.  6. 

4  Fig-  M- 


68     LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

made  in  two  parts.  Those  we  meet  with  to-day- 
are  very  often  in  reality  the  lower  halves  of  old 
cupboards  whose  top  sections  have  been  destroyed. 
They  were  used  in  antechambers,  and  in  certain 
districts  (at  Paris  in  particular  and  in  the  South, 
where  they  were  presently  to  give  birth  to  the 
buffet-credence  of  the  Aries  region)  as  a  sideboard 
in  the  dining-room  or  the  kitchen,  which  for  many 
people  were  the  same  thing.  The  bas  d'armoire, 
sometimes  called  a  demi-huffet^  a  half- sideboard, 
was  about  four  feet  in  height,  and  varied  greatly 
in  width  ;  there  were  some  that  had  three  doors. 
Books  had  heretofore  been  kept  in  ordinary 
cupboards  or  shelves,  or  simply  piled  along  the 
wall.  At  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century 
the  numbers  of  books  in  the  houses  even  of  people 
of  no  great  culture  were  greatly  increased,  and 
the  need  of  devoting  a  special  piece  of  furniture 
to  them  was  strongly  felt :  so  the  bookcase  was 
born,  at  first  known  as  a  "bookcase  cupboard." 
Already  we  have  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Boileau's  three  bookcases.  As  people  in  those 
days  were  not  so  cramped  for  space  in  their 
homes  as  we  are,  and  as  their  books  were  not  so 
overwhelming  in  numbers,  it  was  not  necessary 
to  run  them  up  to  a  great  height — a  method 
that  is  far  from  convenient,  and  is  full  of  danger 
for  the  books,  as  it  multiplies  the  risks  of  falling. 
The  book  cupboard  therefore  was  an  under- 
cupboard,  a  little  taller  than  usual ;  its  doors 
were  fitted  with  a  trellis  made  of  iron  wire, 
behind   which    there  was  a    curtain  of  pleated 


SIDEBOARDS  69 

taffeta.  A  little  later  they  were  glazed  as  well, 
and  Boulle  made  some  of  this  kind,  in  marquetry. 
We  may  note  here  that  the  bookcases  standing 
breast  high,  made  by  Boulle  or  his  imitators,  that 
to-day  adorn  the  Gallery  of  Apollo  in  the  Louvre, 
were  originally  cabinets  that  were  dismounted 
from  their  supports  when  in  the  nineteenth 
century  they  were  employed  in  the  decoration  of 
the  chateau  of  Saint-Cloud.  This  massacre,  like 
so  many  more,  must  be  written  down  against 
Louis-Philippe. 

The  sideboard  in  two  sections  ^  is,  in  a  larger 
shape,  the  old  cupboard  with  four  doors,  with  or 
without  drawers  between  the  two  sections.  It 
has  all  the  characteristics  of  the  cupboard.  The 
upper  doors  are  always  of  wood.  We  seize  the 
opportunity  to  repeat  this  ;  for  it  is  sheer  van- 
dalism to  mutilate  these  fine  old  pieces  by  tearing 
out  their  wooden  panels  to  replace  them  with 
glazing.  The  hiiffet-vaisselier,  or  dresser-side- 
board, which  was  the  palier  of  Normandy  and 
the  menager  of  Champagne,  v^th  all  its  varieties, 
was  certainly  not  invented  before  the  Regency. 
And  yet  we  show  one,^  of  a  very  graceful  and 
individual  type,  which  was  made  in  Lorraine,  and 
may  be  said  to  be  in  the  Louis  XIV  style  by 
reason  of  its  ball-shaped  feet.  It  is  a  curious 
combination  of  the  sideboard,  the  dresser,  and 
the  commode.  The  folk  of  Lorraine  have  always 
loved  these  huge  pieces  of  manifold  utility. 

The  coffers  of  the  Louis  XIV  period  are  very 

I  Fig.  12.  2  Fig.  13. 


70    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

simple,  and  very  far  fallen  from  their  sixteenth 
century  splendours ;  they  are  generally  mounted 
on  a  set  of  legs  with  a  drawer.^  The  most 
interesting  were  covered  in  leather,  pigskin,  or 
cowhide,  sometimes  red  morocco,  with  a  cunning 
decoration  of  gilt  nails.  This  decorative  studding 
often  showed  very  remarkable  composition,  as 
may  be  seen  on  the  coffer  in  Fig.  16,  with  its  royal 
crown  and  fleurs  de  lis.  The  keyhole  escutcheon 
is  a  large  plate  of  repousse  and  open-worked  brass. 
Let  us  salute,  for  the  last  time  before  its  total 
disappearance,  the  cabinet,  which  was  beginning 
to  go  out  of  fashion  about  1690,  after  having  been 
for  three-quarters  of  a  century  pre-eminently 
the  piece  of  furniture  of  supreme  elegance,  and 
especially  affected  by  ladies,  the  article  upon 
which  wild  sums  of  money  and  treasures  of  in- 
genuity were  expended,  which  had  gratified  so 
much  vanity  when  opened  so  as  to  allow  its 
interior  refinement  to  be  admired.  We  have 
told  of  the  mineralogical  lavishness  of  certain 
among  them  which  must  have  been,  and  which 
were,  excessively  ugly:  we  can  judge  of  this  from 
a  specimen  displayed  in  the  Cluny  Museum. 
There  were  many  much  less  ambitious  examples 
that  were  charming  ;  for  example,  those  which  the 
arquebuse  makers  inlaid  with  the  most  delicate 
arabesques  in  bone  or  ivory  on  ebony  and  violet 
wood.  Those  which  were  quite  simple  continued 
to  be  made  in  the  Louis  XIII  style,  with  pilasters 
and  other  architectural  motives. 
I  Fig.  15, 


COMMODES  71 

Of  all  the  novelties  the  commode  was  the 
one  called  to  the  most  brilliant  career.  Some 
authorities  will  have  it  that  it  originated  in  the 
coffer,  others  in  the  under-cupboard,  still  others 
in  the  table.  A  grave  problem,  of  the  same  kind 
as  the  puzzle  whether  the  sofa  is  a  rest-bed 
transformed,  or  a  bench  carried  to  perfection. 
What  is  quite  certain  is  that  it  was  invented 
round  about  the  year  1700;  that  some  persons 
of  the  time  called  it  a  bureau-commode ;  that 
Madame,  the  Regent's  mother,  in  a  letter  dated 
171 8,  still  thought  it  needed  definition:  "A 
commode  is  a  large  table  with  drawers."  Would 
it  then  be  a  table  to  which  drawers  had  been 
added?  But  here  is  Sobry,  almost  at  the  same 
moment,  writing  in  his  Architecture:  "Coffers 
or  arks  are  commonly  called  commodes.  Some 
have  a  lid,  others  have  drawers."  However  it  may 
be,  they  deserved  their  name  so  well  that  they 
were  presently  everywhere  to  be  seen. 

Boule  made  some  famous  ones,  knovm  as  com- 
modes en  tombeau,  because  their  main  shape  with 
two  drawers  is  in  the  form  of  the  sarcophagi 
that  were  placed  on  the  tombs  of  that  period. 
These  are,  it  must  be  confessed,  very  pretentious 
and  irrational  compositions.  Others  with  three 
drawers,  massive,  of  excessively  chubby  contours 
and  with  angles  displaying  the  pied  de  biche  or 
"doe's  foot"  outline,  will  only  have  to  gain  a 
little  simplicity  and  more  disciplined  and  slender 
outlines  to  become  the  beautiful  "  Regency 
commode."     Finally,  there   is   a   last   family   of 


72    LOUIS   XIV    FURNITURE 

those  superb  and  costly  commodes  in  brass  and 
tortoise-shell  marquetry  that  came  out  of  the 
workshops  of  the  BouUes ;  these  have  four  drawers, 
are  rectangular,  with  a  straight  fagade  and  vertical 
uprights.  The  contrast  of  the  austere  simplicity 
of  the  lines  with  the  amazingly  sumptuous 
decoration  of  the  surfaces  is  extremely  effective  ; 
but  how  icy  chill  it  all  is! 

On  the  other  hand,  certain  commodes  of  this 
time,  more  moderate  in  richness,  have  a  really 
grandiose  beauty,  like  the  one  we  see  in  Fig.  17, 
whose  beautiful  broadly  chased  bronzes  are  so 
happily  placed,  and  so  well  enframed  by  the 
sober  marquetry,  and  upon  which  the  flutings  on 
the  angles,  fitted  with  brass  and  starting  from 
an  acanthus  stem,  set  such  noble  architectural 
lines.  The  piece  shown  in  the  next  plate,  Fig.  18, 
supremely  simple  in  its  construction,  owes  all  its 
interest  to  its  slightly  enlivened  facade  and  its 
superb  marquetry  of  coloured  wood  made  up 
of  bouquets  and  rinceaitx  of  flowers:  a  florid, 
branchy  decoration  that  was  certainly  inspired  by 
some  Netherlandish  model.  The  ground  is  ebony, 
the  flowers  of  white  and  red  pearwood,  holly  and 
satinwood. 

TP  ^  JjF  #  # 

Beds  of  the  Louis  XIV  period  are  extremely 
rare,  and  this  is  very  natural.  Their  monumental 
size — some  were  2  metres  25  centimetres  long, 
2  metres  20  centimetres  wide,  and  3  metres 
50  centimetres  high — was  the  cause  of  their 
destruction  as  soon  as  the  fashion  for  bedroom 


BEDS  73 

of  moderate  dimensions  arrived.  Furthermore, 
the  wooden  bed,  inasmuch  as  it  was  completely 
covered  up  in  stuffs,  had  no  artistic  value  that 
might  save  it ;  and  lastly,  they  were  almost  all 
four-posters,  "a  hauts  piliers,"^  and  this  shape 
was  already  beginning  to  appear  "Gothic"  in 
the  eighteenth  century. 

These  edifices  were  be-curtained  with  a  costly 
luxuriousness  of  stuffs  of  which  we  can  now  have 
no  idea,  embroideries,  fringes,  cords,  gold  tassels, 
and  plumes  of  feathers.  In  the  homes  of  people 
of  quality  or  of  wealthy  business  people  the  state 
bed  had  often  cost  more  than  all  the  rest  of  the 
furniture ;  by  the  bed  the  fortune  might  be 
known ;  with  the  carriage  it  was  the  most  con- 
vincing of  all  the  signs  of  wealth.  The  hangings, 
tentiirc^  or  pavement,  or  tour  de  lit,  were 
almost  always  fashioned  with  wide  vertical  stripes, 
strongly  defined,  in  which  plain  velvet,  Genoa 
velvet  with  large  flowers,  brocade  with  palm 
branch  pattern,  and  damask  of  three  colours 
alternated  with  one  another,  or  with  embroidered 
stuffs  "  so  interwoven  with  gold  that  it  was 
difficult  to  distinguish  the  ground,"  fine  stitch 
tapestry  "divided  up  into  pictures  by  a  line  of 
silver  embroidery,"  and  other  works  of  infinite 
patience.  The  equipment  was  extremely  compli- 
cated, for  every  kind  of  bulwark  against  cold  was 
multiplied.  A  bed  in  those  days  was  a  small 
hermetically  sealed  chamber  within  the  large  one, 

I  It  was  also  known  as  "a  qucnotiillcs,"  in  modem  phrase 
a  colonncs. 


74    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

into  which  there  could  penetrate  neither  the 
draughts  that  made  even  the  King's  bedchamber 
in  Versailles  almost  uninhabitable  in  winter,  nor 
the  indiscreet  eyes  of  people  obliged  to  pass  at 
all  hours  through  those  rooms  that  had  no  side 
entrances,  nor  the  continual  clatter  and  noise  of 
those  days  in  which  no  one  had  the  slightest  idea 
of  privacy. 

The  four  pillars,  covered  in  sheaths  known  as 
qiienouilles^  supported  a  tester  called  t\iQ.fojidj 
always  elaborately  decorated,  and  surrounded  by 
four  curtain  rods,  from  which  there  hung  the 
dossier  against  the  wall,  and  curtains  to  the 
number  of  three,  four,  six,  and  even  eight.  The 
rods  were  hidden  on  the  outside  by  the  three 
pentes  de  dehors,  and  on  the  inside  by  the  four 
pentes  de  dedans,^  which  were  bands  of  stuff 
hanging  down,  with  straight  or  scalloped  edges. 
On  each  side  of  the  head,  and  on  each  side  of 
the  foot  there  were  narrow  supplementary  cur- 
tains, the  bonnes  graces,  falling  straight  down 
alongside  the  pillars,  on  the  outside  of  the  large 
curtains  which  they  hide  when  the  latter  are 
pulled  open  ;  the  bonnes  graces  were  very  often 
made  of  a  stuff  whose  colour  made  a  strong 
contrast  against  that  of  the  curtains.  Narrower 
still,  the  cantonnieres  at  the  angles  complete  the 
sealing  process  by  covering  the  chink  that  might 
be  found  at  that  point.    The  bed  itself ,  properly 

I  The  bed  in  Fig.  20  has  six  curtains,  two  bonnes  graces 
cantonnieres,  a  fouci,  seven  fentes,  a  great  dossier,  a  dossier 
chantouvne  (see  further  on),  and  a  counterpane. 


ELABORATE    HANGINGS    -js 

speaking  {chdlit  or  bedstead,  paillasse,  sommier^ 
mattress,  feather-beds,  blankets  and  quilt),  was 
hidden  hj  the  soiibassetnent,  the  valance,  which 
runs  round  it  on  three  sides,  and  by  the  counter- 
pane, always  very  richly  ornate,  which  covered 
it  over. 

To  recapitulate  :  four  quenoiitlles,  a  fond^ 
seven  peiites,  a  dossier,  eight  curtains,  four 
bonnes  graces,  four  cantonniercs,  a  soiibasse- 
ment  in  three  sections,  a  counterpane  .  .  .  the 
equipment  of  a  really  complete  bed  was  made 
up  of  thirty-three  component  parts ! 

We  must  be  careful  not  to  forget  the  magni- 
ficent plumes,  except  for  their  colour  exactly  like 
those  on  our  modern  hearses,  surmounting  the 
bed  posts.  These  four  bouquets  de  plmnes  were 
made  up  of  a  round  hundred  ostrich  feathers 
disposed  around  aigrettes  of  heron  feathers ;  they 
were  white,  green  and  white,  green,  yellow  and 
white,  whatever  the  colour  of  the  bed  might  be. 
Sometimes  they  were  replaced  by  knobs  covered 
with  stuff,  as  in  the  time  of  Louis  XIII,  or  by 
vases  from  which  stood  up  either  metal  bunches 
of  flowers  or  little  crystal  branching  candelabra. 

It  may  properly  be  repeated  that  beds  of  such 
splendour  were  never  made  for  daily  use,  but 
were  the  ornament  of  the  state  chamber,  which 
was  the  reception  room  in  which  all  the  luxury 
of  the  house  was  concentrated,  the  room  in  which 
the  owners  gave  dinners  and  receptions.  The 
fashion  of  the  "  ruelle,"  launched  by  the  incompar- 
able Arthenice  in  the  hey-day  of  the  precieuses. 


76    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

took  a  long  time  to  disappear,  and  more  than 
one  lad^  round  about  1670,  without  in  the  least 
being  a  hel!Lted  precz'euse,  was  still  in  the  habit 
of  receiving  her  women  friends  half  reclining — 
fully  dressed,  not  en  deshabille — on  her  bed,  or 
even  in  it.  Furetiere,  even  while  declaring  that 
the  habit  was  a  thing  of  the  past,  wrote  just 
before  1688  that  the  alcove  was  the  part  of  the 
room  "  in  which  the  bed  and  chairs  for  company- 
were  usually  placed."  And  these  fittings,  made 
of  stuffs  that  were  often  very  delicate,  and  which 
represented  a  fortune,  were  protected  by  a 
whole  paraphernalia  of  loose  covers  and  coiffes — 
they  were  uncovered  only  on  important  occasions. 

Such  was  the  Louis  XIV  bed,  a  perfect  symbol 
of  that  period  so  taken  with  pomposity  and 
marvels.  Even  when  we  run  through  the  in- 
ventories of  middle  class  business  people,  we  are 
stupefied  at  the  coquettish  richness  of  their  beds. 
It  is  all  striped  crimson  velvet  and  silver  moire, 
black  velvet  alternating  with  flame-coloured 
damask,  curtains  of  gold  and  silver  embroidery 
lined  with  cloth  of  silver,  bonnes  graces  of 
English  embroidery,  scalloped  pentes  of  gold  and 
silk,  soubassements  of  yellow  taffeta,  counter- 
panes of  Chinese  satin  with  gold  embroidery, 
or  Indian  damasks.  What  kind  of  bed  must 
M.  Jourdain  have  had,  he  who,  like  his  father, 
was  a  connoisseur  in  stuffs ! 

We  have  seen  that  Boileau's  bed  in  his  Paris 
house  was  nowise  lacking  in  elegance,  nor  even  in 
a  certain  stately  splendour.     His  friend,  Moliere, 


MOLIERE'S    BED  77 

was  far  richer  than  he  was,  and  the  sumptuous- 
ness  of  his  bed  bordered  on  extravagance.  It  is 
true,  that  as  the  son  of  the  King's  tapissier,  and 
himself  holding  the  reversion  of  that  office,  he 
owed  it  to  himself  not  to  be  bedded  like  any 
casual  pauper,  and  it  is  further  true  that  play 
actors  are  not  always  folk  of  the  quietest  taste. 
And  thus  it  was  that  his  state  best  bed  was  "  a 
couch  with  eagle  feet  in  green  bronze,  with  gilt 
and  painted  headpiece,  carved  and  gilt  ;  a  dome 
with  azure  ground,  carved  and  gilt ;  four  knobs 
in  shape  of  vases,  also  of  gilded  wood  ;  the  dome 
aforesaid.  .  .  ."  But  it  is  better  to  summarise 
this  dreadful  prose  of  some  tipstaff  and  sergent 
a  verge  of  the  Chatelet.  That  majestic  dorne, 
azure  and  gold  without,  was  decked  inside  with 
aurora  and  green  taffeta  ;  from  it  there  fell  down 
an  entour  de  lit  of  one  single  piece,  aurora  and 
green,  in  the  shape  of  a  pavilion  or  tent,  with 
three  widths  of  flax-grey  {gris  de  lin)  taffeta 
embroidered  in  gold,  to  which  were  added,  for 
no  clear  reason,  yet  four  more  curtains  of  flowered 
brocade  with  violet  ground.  The  counterpane, 
gris  de  lin  and  gold,  embroidered  with  ciphers, 
was  fined  with  red  toile  boucassinee  (a  starched 
cotton  material).  And  we  spare  the  reader  the 
tale  of  fringes,  mo  I  lets,  embeUishments,  cords, 
tassels  of  fine  gold,  of  imitation  gold,  green  silk, 
aurora  and  gris  de  lin. 

The  simplest  beds,  those  belonging  to  people 
of  modest  estate,  were  hung  with  woollen  stuffs, 
such  as  Aumale  serge,  green  or  red  or  "  dried- 


78     LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

rose-leaf"  colour;  or  of  damas  cafart,  a 
mixture  of  wool  and  silk  or  cotton  and  silk,  of 
Bruges  satin  with  linen  warp,  and  other  "  petty 
stuffs  "  that  were  sold  in  the  rue  Saint-Denis, 
close  by  the  gate  of  Paris,  from  which  they  were 
known  as  ctoffes  de  la  Porte, 

Dome  beds,  such  as  Moliere's,  were  called 
a  rimperiale  ;  tomb-beds,  of  an  ugly  shape 
that  diminished  still  further  the  "cube  of  air  " 
at  the  disposal  of  the  sleepers,  had  much  lower 
posts  at  the  foot  than  at  the  head,  which  gave  a 
sloped  tester.  The  Dictionnaire  de  Trevoiix 
gives  an  ingenious  explanation  of  this  shape : 
''They  were  invented  to  be  placed  in  garrets, 
because  the  roof  prevented  their  being  given  the 
same  height  at  the  foot  as  at  the  head."  And 
they  are  always,  in  reality,  beds  of  a  very  modest 
kind. 

All  beds  were  not  four-posters.  The  duchess- 
bed  had  a  hanging  tester,  as  long  and  as  wide  as 
the  couch,  two  curtains  and  two  bonnes  graces  \ 
the  angel-bed  tester  was  shorter,  and  the  side 
curtains  were  caught  back  by  loops  of  knotted 
ribbons,  the  galants.  The  bed  standing  at 
present  in  the  chamber  of  Louis  XIV  at  Ver- 
sailles was  reconstructed  under  Louis  Philippe 
with  no  great  accuracy:  it  is  a  duchess-bed,  while 
the  Sun-King's  bed  was  invariably  a  four-poster. 

At  the  close  of  the  reign  beds  had  a  double 
dossier,  both  head  and  foot.  TYit  grand  dossier 
was  a  breadth  of  stuff  fastened  to  the  tester  and 
hanging  flat  against  the  wall  at  the  head  of  the 


THE    REST-BED  79 

bed ;  in  front  of  this  was  a  dossier  of  shaped 
wood,  standing  up  from  the  frame  of  the  bed- 
stead, and  with  a  loose  cover  of  embroidered 
stuff ;  its  complicated  outline  procured  it  the 
name  of  curved  dossier  {dossier  chantourne)  or 
chantourne  de  lit.^  It  could  also  be  of  naked 
wood,  carved  and  gilt.  Lastly,  about  the  same 
time  came  the  fashion  for  disordered  beds, 
whose  hangings  were  rumpled  and  cunningly 
disarranged  with  much  assistance  from  cords 
and  gold  tassels,  like  those  emphatic  draperies 
beloved  of  the  portrait  painters  Rigaud  and 
Largilliere,  which  the  Marechal  de  Grammont 
neatly  called  "hyperboles  in  velvet." 

The  rest- bed,  father  of  the  chaise  longue  and 
the  sofa,  which  at  the  outset  was  practically 
undistinguishable  from  it,  had  made  its  appear- 
ance in  the  days  of  Mazarin.  It  became  quite 
usual  under  Louis  XIV,  and  Moliere  had  five  in 
his  house,  one  of  which  matched  his  great  bed  of 
state.  Its  average  size  was  2  metres  long  by 
80  centimetres  wide.  Set  as  a  fixture  by  a  wall, 
it  often  had  at  the  head  a  high  dossier  of  carved 
gilt  wood  and  a  tester  like  a  duchess-bed,  or 
an  angel-bed ;  it  was  sometimes  fitted  with 
permanent  upholstery  nailed  on  to  the  wood, 
sometimes  a  mattress  or  two  mattresses  on  top 
of  the  other.  Other  rest-beds,  more  easy  to 
handle,  had  two  dossiers  that  occasionally  were 
movable  ones. 

a^  J^  ^f  M^  ^ff 

•n*  "ff  ^  tP  "Tf* 

I  Fig.  20. 


8o    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

In  the  days  of  Mazarin  tables  ceased  to  be 
hidden  under  covers  faUing  down  to  the  floor, 
and  so  they  began  to  display  a  wholly  new 
magnificence  after  the  Italian  fashion.  No 
longer  was  there  a  set  of  furniture  to  be  found, 
however  modest,  without  a  few  tables  with 
elaborate  legs,  stretchers,  and  friezes,  laden  with 
carvings  that  were  most  frequently  gilded,  and 
for  their  tops  a  marquetry-piece  of  wood  and 
pewter  or  tortoise-shell  and  brass,  or  a  slab  of 
costly  marble,  granite,  porphyry,  or  Oriental 
alabaster,  or  else  a  marquetry  of  many-coloured 
stone  mosaic,  framed  in  black  marble  or  touch. 
These  last  kind  were  called  "  Florence  tables." 
Mazarin  brought  them  over  from  Italy,  but 
Colbert  suborned  in  Tuscany  specialist  craftsmen 
to  come  to  the  Gobelins  and  train  French  pupils. 
This  sumptuous  method  of  decoration,  though 
prone  to  become  a  trifle  loud,  as  may  be  seen 
at  Versailles  and  in  the  Apollo  Gallery,  was  made 
up  of  elaborate  rinceaux,  emblems,  or  flowers  and 
birds  in  "natural"  colours;  the  stone  tesserae, 
which  were  laid  with  astounding  accuracy  and 
precision,  were  lapis  lazuli,  cornelian,  jasper, 
chalcedony,  and  even  mother  of  pearl. 

These  tables  were  enormously  hea\'y,  and 
besides,  they  became  an  integral  part  of  the 
decoration  of  a  room.  They  were  left  accordingly 
permanently  in  place  against  the  wall ;  only 
three  of  their  faces  were  seen,  and  the  fourth  was 
left  without  ornament.  Since  the  legs  were  often 
shaped  like  the  architectural  consoles  in  fashion, 


TABLE    LEGS  8i 

as  we  have  pointed  out,  at  this  period  they  were 
called  "  console  tables,"  or  more  simply  still, 
"  consoles  ";  and  by  an  extension  of  idea,  the 
name  consoles  de  milieu  was  given  to  tables 
highly  ornamented  on  all  four  faces,  but  made  to 
stand  out  in  the  middle  of  a  room.  Finally, 
when  consoles  de  milieu  had  become  very 
common,  the  others  were  called  consoles 
d  applique. 

When  not  console-shaped,  or  double  consoles 
(two  consoles  back  to  back)  the  legs  of  Louis  XIV 
tables  were  en  gaine  or  en  baliistre  ^  (pedestal 
or  baluster-shaped).  Among  the  fifteen  or  so 
types  of  balusters  used  by  architects,  the  cabinet- 
makers of  course  chose  for  their  table  legs  those 
whose  thickest  part  is  above,  urn-balusters  and 
vase-balusters  with  square  section,  or  the  com- 
posite renverse  with  circular  section  and  gad- 
roons.  They  did  not  fail  also  to  lengthen  them 
according  to  their  caprice  or  to  make  them  as 
complicated  as  they  pleased.  The  flat  baluster, 
en  fagade*  was  also  very  much  used,  as  well  as 
the  pedestal  shape. 

Besides  these  legs,  which  have  a  vertical  axis, 
there  was  to  be  found,  more  and  more  frequently 
as  the  reign  drew  towards  its  end,  the  pied  de 
biche  or  "  doe's  foot  "  with  highly  accentuated 
curve.  At  first  it  was  made  up  of  two  long- 
drawn  S-shaped  curves,  in  continuation  of  one 
another  back  to  back  and  each  ending  in  two 
little  volutes,  the  lower  standing  on  a  cloven 
I  Fig.  21. 

F 


82    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

stag's  hoof,  the  upper  often  ornamented  with  a 
mascaron  in  hollow  profile/  The  two  curves 
were  next  coalesced  into  one. 

The  frieze  carries,  on  the  facade  if  it  is  a 
console  d^appliqiie  or  wall  table,  on  every  side 
or  the  long  sides  if  a  simple  table,  an  "  apron  " 
(tablier)  of  ornaments  cut  out  and  carved  in 
open-work,  the  centre-piece  of  which  was  usually 
a  mask  or  mascaron ;  the  background  of  the 
frieze  is  lozenged.^  The  cross  pieces  of  the 
stretcher,  which  is  seldom  missing,^  were  made  of 
S  curves  or  consoles  '*  arranged  in  different  com- 
binations: their  Hne  was  too  often  lost  under  an 
excess  of  ornamental  carving. 

Tables  not  so  rich,  but  still  very  highly  ornate, 
were  made  in  natural  or  painted  woods,  and 
their  tops  also  made  of  wood  ;  as  for  quite  simple 
tables  of  the  Louis  XIV  style  there  are  practically 
none  in  existence:  during  the  whole  of  the 
century  tables  continued  to  be  made  whose 
turned  legs,  whether  twisted  or  not,^  cause  them 
to  be  assigned  to  the  Louis  XIII  period.  "  What 
is  called  a  '  table  column '  {colonne  de  table),''^ 
says  Richelet  in  his  Dictionnaire  (1680),  "is  any 
piece  of  wood  turned  or  twisted  that  serves  to 
hold  up  the  top  part  of  a  table."  Nevertheless, 
here  we  have  two,  one  ^  of  quite  countrified  make, 

1  Fig.  22. 

2  Figs.  21  and  22. 

3  See,  nevertheless,  Fig.  21. 

4  Fig.  22. 

5  Figs.  23  and  24;  the  stretchers  are  clearly  Louis  XIV. 

6  Fig.  25. 


WRITING    TABLES  83 

the  other'  more  bourgeois  in  character,  which 
can  quite  properly  be  called  Louis  XIV  by  reason 
of  their  supports,  doe's  feet  en/agade  or  upright 
bracket  legs.  The  elegance  and  logic  of  this 
latter  shape  of  leg  are,  to  speak  candidly,  both 
extremely  open  to  discussion. 

As  it  was  not  far  from  the  time  when  the  table 
was  ordinarily  a  flat  tray  set  on  trestles,  it  was 
not  yet  fixed  in  people's  minds  that  it  formed  an 
inseparable  whole,  and  accordingly  we  often  find 
in  the  inventories  items  such  as  "  a  table  of  carved 
walnut,  on  its  foot  of  the  same  wood,"  which 
does  not  mean  a  table  in  two  parts ;  and  this 
explains  oddities  such  as  those  tables  whose  top 
and  frieze  are  walnut,  while  the  legs  and  stretcher 
are  of  glided  wood. 

We  saw  how  in  the  preceding  period  the  genus 
table  began  to  be  subdivided  into  species.  This 
evolution  continued  under  the  great  King,  and 
it  was  in  his  day  that  little  writing  tables  (en 
ecritoirc)  appeared,  covered  with  black  morocco, 
green  panne  or  crimson  velvet,  with  a  drawer 
that  held  the  inkstand  and  the  brass  pounce-box. 
Society  was  becoming  more  and  more  epistolary 
in  its  habits. 

We  know  how  high  the  passion  for  gaming  ran 
in  this  epoch,  especially  at  Court,  where  the 
struggle  against  boredom  was  a  desperate  one. 
And  so  for  hoca — "that  abominable  hoca," 
Madame  de  Sevigne  called  it — for  reversi,  for 
basset,  for  brelan,  for  ombre,  there  were  needed 
I  Fig.  26. 


84    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

quantities  of  tables,  each  specially  planned  for 
its  particular  game,  pentagonal,  square,  triangular, 
according  to  the  number  of  the  players ;  they 
were  covered  in  green  velvet  and  sometimes  fitted 
with  purses,  one  in  the  middle  and  one  for  each 
player,  and  accompanied  at  each  corner  by  a 
little  gueridon  on  which  a  single  or  branching 
candlestick  was  placed.  Gueridons  to  match  also 
went  with  console  tables  and  cabinets :  these  were 
not  little  round  tables  of  the  same  height  as  the 
others,  but  tall  candle  bearers,  often  monumental 
in  size,  made  of  a  support  of  gilded  wood  and  a 
branching  candelabrum  of  crystal  or  metal. 

There  is  one  novelty  that  already  round  1680 
announces  the  taste  that  will  distinguish  the 
eighteenth  century  for  small,  delicate,  easily 
moved  articles  of  furniture.  This  is  the  cabaret^ 
"  called  in  Chinese  bandege  (?),"  the  most  fre- 
quently used  variety  of  which  was  the  cabaret  a 
cafe.  This  was  the  name  given  to  a  light  table 
with  two  trays  in  "  vernis  de  Chine,^''  Chinese 
lacquer,  used  to  carry  and  to  pass  round  china, 
and  coffee  cups  in  particular. 

Toilet-tables  and  night-tables  appeared  towards 
the  close  of  the  reign  ;  there  were  fourteen  of  the 
former  and  twelve  of  the  latter  in  the  Chateau  de 
Rambouillet  when  it  was  acquired  by  the  Crown 
and  furnished  in  1706  for  the  Comte  de  Toulouse, 
the  legitimate  son  of  Madame  de  Montespan.  A 
toilette  was  originally  a  square  piece  of  linen,  in 
which  were  gathered  together  for  putting  away 
in  the  night  coffer  {coffre  de  niiit)  the  various 


THE   TOILETTE  85 

articles  used  In  cleansing  and  beautifying  the  face 
the  hair  and  the  hands ;  when  the  moment  had 
come  for  them  the  toilette  was  laid  out  on  any 
table,  its  contents  arranged  in  goodly  array,  and 
thereupon  began  the  service  of  beauty.  The 
modest  square  of  linen  did  not  fail  to  transmute 
itself  into  a  little  mat  of  crimson  velvet  with  gold 
lace  trimming,  Isabella-coloured  moire  lined  with 
aurora  taffeta  and  embeUished  with  a  little  gold 
or  silver  lace  ;  and  men's  toilettes  were  no  less  gay 
than  the  ladies'.  Had  not  that  genial  gardener, 
Andre  le  Nostre,  one  of  white  satin,  embroidered 
in  silver  and  gold  and  silk?  And  then  the  toilette 
gave  its  name  to  the  articles  laid  out  on  it,  as  to 
the  operation  for  which  they  were  used,  and  to 
the  tables  specially  made  to  carry  them,  tables 
whose  boxes  or  drawers  replaced  the  night  coffer. 
Ideas  of  cleanliness  making  some  modest  progress, 
there  was  a  dessoiis  de  toilette  permanently  in 
position  on  the  table  in  question,  and  made  of 
costly  materials,  this  was  covered  by  a  dessus  de 
toilette  in  mushn  with  flounces  or  furbelows, 
which  was  easily  changed.  But  it  was  only  under 
Louis  XV  that  the  toilette  became  the  pretty 
piece  of  furniture  wth  compartments  so  well 
known  to  us. 

From  the  writing-table  was  born  the  bureau, 
from  the  first  third  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
Already  under  Louis  XIV  it  might  be  of  various 
different  forms.  The  flat  bureau  was  a  large 
writing-table,  covered  with  leather,  fitted  with 
three  drawers,  and  often  accompanied  by  a  little 


86    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

subsidiary  article,  the  gradin,  made  up  of  shelves 
or  drawers,  sometimes  equipped  with  a  door 
shutting  with  lock  and  key,  which  stood  on  one 
end  of  the  table  ;  a  little  later  there  were  also 
gradins,  called  rather  serre-papiers^  or  paper- 
holders,  larger  in  size,  furnished  with  feet  and 
standing  on  the  ground  beside  the  table.  Other 
Louis  XIV  bureaux  with  multiple  drawers  were 
more  or  less  like  our  ugly  hiireaitx  ministres-. 
but  they  are  less  heavy,  carried  as  they  are  on 
eight  fairly  tall  legs  joined  four  and  four  by  cross- 
shaped  stretchers.  Their  decoration  was  ex- 
ceedingly painstaking  and  exquisite  :  veneering 
of  walnut  outlined  in  pewter,  inlay  of  brass  on 
ebony,  on  tortoise-shell,  etc. ;  Andre  Charles 
Boulle  has  left  us  a  great  number  of  these.  The 
top  was  either  flat  or  a  hrisiire ;  ^  the  angles  of 
the  sections  to  right  and  left  were  reinforced  by 
those  characteristic  projecting  buttresses  whose 
curves  give  them  the  appearance  of  violins  cut 
in  two.  One  of  the  most  perfect  that  ever  came 
out  of  the  Boulle  workshops  is  in  the  Petit  Palais, 
in  the  Dutuit  collection. 

The  most  monumental  of  all  are  the  scribamies. 
These  imposing  pieces,  Flemish  or  Dutch  in  their 
origin,  have  a  desk  or  flap,  a  niche  for  the  legs  of 
the  person  writing,  drawers  to  the  right  and  left 
down  to  the  ground ;  the  upper  part  is  a  cup- 
board with  two  doors,  surmounted  by  a  pediment 
with  a  platform  for  delft.  The  bureau  shown 
in  Fig.  27  is  not  quite  so  huge  and  important 

I  With  desk  slope. 


LADIES'    BUREAUX  87 

as  this,  despite  its  score  of  drawers  and  its 
giiichet;  its  style  in  any  case  has  nothing 
Flemish  about  it. 

Ladies'  bureaux,  as  is  fitting,  are  smaller  in 
size.  Madame  de  Maintenon  had  two  in  her 
chamber,  "  of  marquetry  of  pewter  on  a  ground 
of  walnut  wood,  with  four  drawers  and  a  guichet 
in  front  with  sloping  flap  and  three  drawers, 
standing  on  eight  pedestal  pillars  of  the  same 
work  with  silvered  wood  capitals  and  bases." 
Their  dimensions  were  two  feet  nine  inches  by 
one  foot  nine  inches  (89  by  57  centimetres). 
Bureaux  of  this  kind  are  what  are  called  in  the 
modern  dealers'  jargon,  "  donkey  backed  "  {a  dos 
d^dne) ;  the  eighteenth  century  said  bureaux  h 
tente^  "  slanting  bureaux." 


CHAPTER  III  :   SEATS 

Here  begins  a  chapter  of  very  great  importance 
when  we  are  dealing  with  furniture  under  Louis 
XIV !  If  anyone  cared  to  extract  from  Saint- 
Simon's  Memoirs  everything  pertaining  to  the 
hierarchy  of  Seats,  the  jealousies,  quarrels,  in- 
trigues, secret  conspiracies,  usurpations,  wrongs, 
vengeances,  triumphs  and  humiliations  that  could 
spring  out  of  the  question  of  the  right  to  the 
arm-chair  or  to  the  backed  chair,  to  the  high 
stool  or  the  ordinary  stool,  he  might  fill  more  than 
one  volume.  Dangeau  and  Luynes  are  in  every 
page  busy  over  this  thorny  and  engrossing  ques- 
tion of  the  backed  chair.  Are  folding  stools  and 
plain  tabouret-stools  equal  in  honour  ?  A  serious 
business ;  Saint-Simon  decides  learnedly  that 
"  there  is  no  difference  whatever  between  these 
two  seats  with  neither  arms  nor  back."  If  the 
duchesses  are  visiting  in  the  apartments  of  a 
princess  of  the  blood,  they  sit  in  arm-chairs ;  but 
let  the  King  come  in  and  they  must  needs  hasten 
to  leave  the  arm-chairs,  as  having  no  longer  any 
right  to  them  in  His  Majesty's  presence,  and 
curtsy  made,  they  must  sit  upon  stools,  quitted 
by  ladies  who  are  not  duchesses,  to  whom  in 
turn  etiquette  now  only  allows  a  hassock.  This 
etiquette  with  regard  to  chairs  is  in  any  case,  as 
may  well  be  believed,  no  more  elaborate  at 
Versailles  than  at  Madrid  or  in  London  ;   on  the 


ARM-CHAIRS  89 

contrary,  the  Court  of  France  is  the  only  one 
where  the  height  of  the  chair  back  is  of  no 
consequence ;  in  every  other  European  Court 
"  the  difference  in  the  height  of  the  chair-back 
marks  the  difference  between  persons."  This  is 
the  order  of  precedence:  at  the  bottom,  the 
hassocks:  those  of  noble  ladies  are  adorned  with 
gold  gimp  ;  those  for  ladies  of  the  law  and  the 
bourgeoisie  have  a  mere  silk  edging.  Next  come 
folding  stools  and  joint  stools  ;  then  the  chairs 
with  backs,  and,  last  and  highest,  the  arm-chair. 
Nothing  is  more  significant  than  a  Louis  XIV 
arm-chair,  except  a  Louis  XIV  bed:  all  the 
characteristics  of  the  style,  more  than  that  even, 
the  very  character  of  the  period  itself  is  summed 
up  in  it.  It  is  an  ample,  stately  seat,  of  imposing 
size  and  strength ;  its  lofty  rectangular  back  seems 
made  to  be  the  worthy  frame  for  a  majestic  and 
virile  head  in  a  peruke,  and  for  shoulders  widened 
by  the  floods  of  ribbons  of  the  "-petite  ot'e,''' or 
for  a  woman's  head  crowned  with  the  Apollo 
rays  of  the  high  head-dress  known  as  the/ojitange; 
its  great  size,  the  massive  volutes  of  its  arms,  its 
legs  joined  heavily  with  heavy  cross  pieces,  all  give 
it  an  air  of  immobility  and  weight.  We  c^m  see 
it  remaining  fixed  in  one  place  with  a  willing  air, 
decorative,  and  useless,  ranged  with  its  peers 
along  the  wall  of  an  alcove ;  to  have  it  mov^d  it 
seems  as  though  one  must  call  up  a  pair  of  lackeys, 
and  two  great  clumsy  fellows  with  gold  lace  on 
every  seam  must  bring  it  forward  with  due 
solemnity.     To  see  it  evokes  the  idea  of  choice 


90    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

conversation,  full  of  ceremony  and  well  regulated, 
stiff  attitudes,  and  snuff  taken  with  delicately 
studied  gestures.  What  a  difference  compared  to 
a  gondola-shaped  bergere  of  the  following  reign, 
all  grace  and  comfort,  all  made  up  of  fugitive 
elusive  curves  that  slip  away  without  bringing  the 
eye  to  a  halt  ! 

Impossible  not  to  speak  first  of  all  of  the  king 
of  arm-chairs  ...  we  mean  the  throne  of  Louis 
XIV.  Let  us  salute  it  as  we  go  by,  even  as  anyone 
would  have  been  obliged  to  do  if  in  the  Grands 
Appartements  at  Versailles  he  crossed  the  Apollo 
Salon,  also  known  as  the  "  Chamber  of  the  dais." 
It  stood  upon  a  platform  with  several  steps,  sur- 
mounted by  a  dais  all  gold  embroidery  of  over- 
whelming richness  ;  before  the  great  melting 
down  of  plate  in  1689-90  it  was  all  solid  silver, 
draped  with  crimson  velvet ;  for  feet  it  had  four 
figures  of  children  carrying  baskets  of  flowers 
upon  their  heads  ;  on  the  summit  of  the  back, 
which  was  eight  feet  high,  about  2  metres  60 
centimetres,  a  laurel-crowned  Apollo  held  his  lyre. 
To  go  with  this  there  was  a  hanging  of  eight 
great  widths  of  embroidered  stuff  with  eighteen 
pilasters,  all  dull  silver  and  bright  gold,  with  a 
trifle  of  chenille,  and  flanking  it  to  right  and  left 
— our  imagination  fails  before  the  task  of  picturing 
such  magnificences — there  stood  two  caryatides 
in  full  relief,  fifteen  feet  high,  nearly  5 
metres,  entirely  made  of  full  gold  embroidery! 
Is  it  permissible  to  think  that  this  was  not 
perhaps  very  beautiful?     After    1690  the  royal 


HIGH    BACKS  91 

throne  was  a  much  more  modest  affair.  The 
General  Inventory  of  Crown  Furniture  is  satisfied 
with  the  following  description :  "  A  large  wooden 
arm-chair,  carved  with  several  ornaments  and 
silvered,  to  be  used  as  a  throne  for  the  King 
when  he  gives  audiences  to  ambassadors ;  the 
said  arm-chair  done  in  velvet  embellished  with 
gold  and  silver  embroidery." 

But  what  precisely  are  we  to  call  a  Louis  XIV 
arm-chair?     It     must    be    confessed    that    the 
assigning    of  a  piece  of  furniture  or   a  chair  to 
this  style  or  that    is    often    very  arbitrary,  but 
every    classification,     whether    with    regard    to 
antique    objects,    plants    or    molluscs,    calls    for 
simplification,  the  elimination  of  many  exceptions  , 
sports  and  hybrids,  and  insists  that    only  what 
remains  after  these  processes  shall   be  reckoned. 
Thus,  for  the  sake  of  greater  convenience,  among 
the    seventeenth  century  arm-chairs    it    will   be 
permissible  to  assign  to  the  Louis  XIII  style  all 
those    whose  backs  are    still  low,   square,    or    of 
greater    width   than    height;   and   to  the  Louis 
XIV  style  those  in  which  the  back  is  higher  than 
its  width.     But  there  is  no  very  clearly  marked 
distinction  between  the  Louis  XIV  arm-chair  and 
the  Regency  arm-chair,  as  there  is  a  very  numerous 
series  of    "  transition  "   models.     We  shall  speak 
of  the  latter  at  the  end  of  this  volume ;   in  the 
present  chapter   we  shall   deal  only  with  purely 
Louis  XIV  seats,  Le.,  those  with  high  rectangular 
back,  legs  en  fagade^  and,  in   the  case  of  arm- 
chairs with  arms  not  set  back  (the  ends  of  the 


92    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

arms  carried  on  consoles  that  are  vertical  continu- 
ations of  the  ]egs). 

Upholstered  arm-chairs  have  their  backs  com- 
pletely covered  with  no  wood  showing ;  the  top 
of  this  back  is  a  straight  line,  the  lower  part 
is  sometimes  separated  from  the  seat  by  a  gap  ^ 
and  sometimes  not.^ 

The  legs  continue  in  many  cases,  as  in  the 
time  of  Louis  XIII,  to  be  turned,^  even  in 
costly  chairs ;  for  example,  on  Moliere's  death 
there  were  twenty-two  arm-chairs  in  his  house, 
among  which  were  "  twelve  of  twisted  walnut 
with  lion  heads  and  six  with  sphinx  faces ;  two 
of  walnut  with  twisted  pillars."  The  latter  two, 
more  sumptuous,  and  matching  the  bed  of  state, 
were  of  carved  and  gilded  wood.  The  legs, 
either  moulded  or  carved,  are  sometimes  baluster- 
shaped,^  sometimes  pedestal-shaped,  very  often 
console-shape  ;  ^  they  end  in  flattened  balls,  some- 
times carved,^  or  in  lion  feet ;  or  else  the  lower 
scroll  tip  of  the  console  rests  directly  on  the 
ground,  with  a  little  cube  of  plain  wood  inter- 
posed to  take  hard  wear  and  knocks/  or,  again, 
the  consoles  have  one  base  squared  and  moulded, 
from  which  the  stretcher  cross-pieces  start,  and 
under  this  a  second  base  of  the  same  kind,  as  in 
the  excellent  model  shown  in  Fig.  32,  so  un- 
happily covered  in  one  of  those  hideous  needle- 

1  Figs.  28,  30,  etc.  4  Figs.  31  and  38. 

2  Figs.  32,  36,  etc.  5  Figs.  32  and  33. 

3  Figs.  28,  29,  35.  6  Figs.  29  and  30. 

7  Fig.  33. 


STRETCHERS  93 

work  tapestries  made  by  our  grandmothers  under 
the  Second  Empire. 

The  stretcher  is  a  sine  qua  non.  Arm-chairs 
and  backed  chairs  were  so  big  and  so  heavy  that 
their  legs  would  have  been  dislocated  or  speedily 
broken  if  they  had  not  been  solidly  joined 
together  at  the  foot.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
period,  and  when  arm-chairs  had  turned  legs,  the 
cross  bars  were  shaped  like  an  H,^  and  the  place 
where  they  were  morticed  into  the  legs  was  left 
square  for  greater  strength ;  this  part  often  had 
a  four-leaved  rosette  carved  into  it.^  Sometimes 
there  is  an  additional  traverse  joining  the  two 
front  legs  near  the  top  ;  this  gives  greater  firm- 
ness to  the  frame  of  the  chair,  but  is  above  all 
decorative.  If  it  was  ornamented  in  the  middle 
with  a  carved  motive,^  upholsterers  gave  it  the 
name  of  a  blason.  Console  legs  might  also  have 
an  H-shaped  stretcher  ;  each  of  the  cross  bars  is, 
in  that  case,  made  of  two  consoles  set  end  to  end 
which,  slightly  simplified,  give  the  accolade  * 
or  bracket  motive  frequently  employed.  The 
X-shaped  stretcher  is  more  elegant,  freer,  less 
square  in  shape  ;  it  can  be  of  immense  importance 
decoratively,  as  in  the  case  of  tables.  There  are 
two  principal  types ;  either  four  consoles  are 
joined  head  to  head  to  make  a  large  central 
motive, 5  sometimes  a  very  clumsy  one,  or  else 
perhaps  the  moulded  cross-pieces  form,   to  the 

1  Figs.  28,  30,  etc.  3  Fig.  29. 

2  Fig.  30.  4  Figs.  34  and  36. 

5  Fig-  31. 


94    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

right  and  the  left,  two  of  the  motives  we  have 
called  cintres  a  ressaiit,  and  met  with  so  fre- 
quently on  the  panels  of  cupboards.  These 
come  together  tangentially  at  the  deepest  part  of 
the  curve,  and  are  completed  by  a  central  boss 
at  the  point  where  they  meet.^ 

The  frieze  of  the  Louis  XIV  arm-chair  is 
nearly  always  hidden  by  the  upholstery,  but 
sometimes  the  wood  is  left  visible  and  decorated 
with  a  carved  canipane  or  scalloped  motive. 

The  arms  or  accotoivs  are  usually  of  bare 
wood,  nevertheless  the  stufied  manchette,  which 
was  to  become  general  in  the  Regency  period, 
made  its  appearance  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  "Yhty  are  supported  by  straight  up- 
rights, sometimes  turned  balusters ;  ^  or,  prefer- 
ably, they  are  moulded  and  curved  to  console 
shape  :  hence  the  name  consoles  cP accotoivs  ^ 
given  by  upholsterers  to  these  supports.  The 
volute  that  invariably  terminates  the  arm  is  part 
of  it  and  not  of  the  console,  though  certain 
arm-chairs,'*  thanks  to  a  trick  of  the  moulding, 
suggest  the  opposite  effect.  The  appearance  of 
these  great  wooden  arms  is  not  happy  when  they 
are  too  horizontal,  and  when  their  volute  is  not 
sufficiently  developed  ;  ^  but  they  can  be  magnifi- 
cent if  they  start  high,  have  a  free  sweeping  curve, 
and  at  the  extremities  expand  into  a  wide  volute 
generously  carved  out  of  a  solid  piece,  and  if  their 

1  Fig.  32.  3  Figs.  30,  31  and  32. 

2  Figs.  29  and  35.  4  Fig.  28. 

5  Fig.  29. 


"CROW    CHAIRS"  95 

moulding  has  been  carefully  designed  and  is  in 
harmony  with  that  of  the  console.'  It  is  by  no 
means  uncommon  to  find  examples  that  are 
admirably  successful,  and  it  is  a  genuine  sensuous 
dehght  to  run  the  hand  over  those  ample 
mouldings,  carried  out  with  a  firm  and  caressing 
tool,  in  walnut  that  has  been  polished  by  the  wear 
of  two  hundred  years.  Not  the  least  beautiful 
arm-chairs  are  those  that  have  no  other  adornment 
than  this  refined  moulding. 

Simpler  arm-chairs,  made  for  the  use  of  the 
modest  middle  classes,  copy  those  we  have  just 
been  describing  in  their  general  lines,  but  they 
are  without  carving  or  mouldings,  and  have  all 
their  "  limbs  "  simply  rounded.  Very  strong  and 
solid,  they  have  survived  in  considerable  numbers 
two  centuries  of  wear  and  of  changing  fashions, 
and  are  found  nearly  everywhere.  In  certain 
provincial  parts  they  were  called  "  crow's  beak  " 
chairs,  or  simply  "  crow  chairs "  {chaises  a  bee 
de  corbin  or  a  corbiri)  on  account  of  the  hooked 
shape  of  the  end  of  their  arms,  an  approximate 
copy  of  the  volute.^  These  arm-chairs  are  by 
many  dealers  quite  incorrectly  called  "Louis 
XIII  arm-chairs " ;  they  are  pure  Louis  XIV 
and  were  often  made  in  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  We  shall  see  elsewhere  that- 
many  of  them  display  the  characteristics  of  the 
Regency  period. 

The  bergere  seems  only  to  have  received  its 
name  in  the  early  years  of  the  personal  reign  of 
I  Fig.  32.  2  Fig.  36. 


96    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

Louis  XV,  but  it  had  long  been  in  existence. 
The  arm-chair  of  Fig.  33  is  witness  to  this. 
Very  embracing,  very  fully  upholstered,  more 
comfortable  indeed  than  elegant,  with  its  ears, 
its  solid  sidesi  {joues  pleines),  and  its  movable 
cushion,  this  lumpish  seat  is  like  a  badly  reduced 
sketch  of  a  "  confessional "  bergere.  Under 
Louis  XIV  this  was  called  a  "  confessional."  The 
earliest  examples  had  been  actually  made  so  that 
priests  might  listen  in  comfort  to  the  sins  of  the 
faithful ;  the  ears  in  that  case  were  not  stuffed  ; 
they  were  pierced  with  a  kind  of  Judas  hole  or 
jalousie. 

In  reality  the  seat  in  question  is  only  a  very 
simple  example  of  the  fauteuil  de  commodite, 
which  existed  under  other  names  ever  since  the 
sixteenth  century  for  the  convenience  of  old  men, 
invalids,  and  languid  ladies.  Here  is  Furetiere's 
definition  :  "  We  give  the  name  of  chaise  de 
commodite  to  a  well-stuifed  chair,  with  a  desk 
for  reading  and  writing,  and  a  ratchet  to  raise  or 
lower  the  back  at  will,  in  which  one  can  sleep 
or  recline."  Let  us  continue  his  description  : 
two  jointed  arms,  fixed  in  the  desk,  carried 
candles ;  large  pockets  allowed  the  invalid  to 
have  small  articles  within  his  reach;  some  had 
screens,  and  others,  a  Cimperiale^  had  a  dome 
and  curtains. 

Let  us  observe,  to  make  an  end  of  upholstered 
arm-chairs,  the  re-appearance  of  the  low-backed 
arm-chair  towards  the  end  of  the  century  in  the 
shape  of  tYit  fauteuil  a  cceffer  (arm-chair  for  hair- 


THE   CANAPE  97 

dressing).  The  Duchesse  de  Bourgogne  had  one 
of  this  kind,  covered  in  red  damask  "  with  velvet 
let  in " ;  and  we  may  note  that  the  ancient 
caquetoire  or  "  gossip  "  is  always  in  favour.  This 
was  a  little  chair  on  low  legs,  easy  to  move  about 
for  goFnping,  and  highly  appreciated  by  the 
ladies.  A  contemporary  dictionary  defined  it  as 
"  a  very  low  chair,  with  very  high  back  and  no 
arms,  in  which  one  can  chatter  at  one's  ease  by 
the  chimney-corner."  But  there  were  also 
caquetoires  with  arms,  and  derni-caquetoires^ 
which  were  arm-chairs  a  little  lower  in  the  seat 
than  usual. 

There  is  but  little  to  say  of  the  backed  chairs 
without  arms,  which  came  after  the  chaises  a 
vertugadin  or  "  farthingale  chairs  "  of  the  early 
part  of  the  century.  Less  common  than  the 
arm-chairs,  they  differed  only  in  being  without 
arms,  their  dimensions  were  much  the  same,  the 
same  back,  the  same  legs,  the  same  stretchers.^ 

One  important  invention  of  the  upholsterers 
under  Louis  XIV  was  the  sofa,  which  is,  to  say 
the  truth,  merely  a  rejuvenation  of  the  bench, 
which  had  had  so  long  and  honourable  a  career 
in  the  middle  ages.  What  Vadius  was  it 
who  suggested  to  the  master-upholsterer  who 
"launched  "  the  earliest  sofas  that  goodly  name 
canape.,  so  nobly  drawn  from  the  Greek — and 
mutilated  in  the  process  ?  Properly  speaking, 
a  canape^  or  rather  conopee^  should  be  a  bed  with 
a  mosquito  netting.  It  may  therefore  be  pre- 
I  Figs  34,  37  and  38. 


98    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

sumed  that  the  first  canape  was  a  rest-bed,  a 
piece  of  furniture  meant  for  lying  on  and  not 
sitting  ;  and  in  fact,  to  speak  by  the  book,  a 
ceitain  Monconys  wrote  in  1663  in  his  Voyages  : 
"two  canapes^  these  are  forms  with  a  back  at 
each  end."  Now  a  form  is  a  bench  ;  and  a  bench 
with  a  back  at  each  end  is  a  rest-bed.  An  in- 
ventory of  the  time  describes  "  a  canape^  the 
wooden  frame  fitted  with  a  mattress,  and  a  wool 
mattress,  with  a  feather  bolster  on  top."  In 
another  we  read,  "a  rest-bed  en  canape^  made 
up  of  two  mattresses,  two  bolsters,  two  loose 
cushions  and  bed  cover,  to  which  are  attached 
three  valances."  Some  little  time  later,  towards 
1680,  the  word  sopha  made  its  appearance  in  the 
language,  and  seems  to  signify  the  same  thing  as 
the  word  canape  ;  it  is  useless  to  try  to  establish 
any  distinction  whatever  between  them.  Origin- 
ally then,  it  was  a  rest-bed  with  two  dossiers^ 
and  presently  there  were  three  ;  and  even  before 
the  earliest  dawn  of  the  Regency  style  we  see 
veritable  canapes  in  the  modern  sense  of  the 
word,  that  is  to  say,  in  short,  very  large  arm- 
chairs for  several  persons,  with  a  back  and  two 
arms.  Furetiere,  in  1690,  gives  this  definition  : 
"  a  kind  of  backed  chair,  very  wide,  in  which  two 
persons  can  sit  very  comfortably.  .  .  .  The 
word  is  new  to  the  language,  and  some  say 
sophay  Henceforward  the  canape  or  sopha, 
with  arm-chairs  to  match,  composes  the  classic 
suite  of  seats  that  has  grown  indissolubly  wedded 
to  the    idea  of    a    drawing-room.      Thus,    that 


SOFAS    AND    BENCHES      99 

dainty  person,  Nicolas  Boileau  Despreaux,  had  in 
his  chamber  "  a  small  sofa  and  two  arm-chairs  of 
gilded  wood,  fitted  in  leather,  and  covered  with 
a  silk  stuff  with  silver  flowers."  Leather  covered 
sofas  were  to  be  seen  in  nearly  every  billiard 
room.  It  is  quite  as  superfluous  for  us  to  dwell 
upon  the  sofas  as  on  the  chairs  of  the  period ; 
their  construction,  like  their  decoration,  is  the 
same  as  that  of  the  arm-chairs ;  many  of  them 
have,  with  their  eight  legs,  the  air  of  three  arm- 
chairs joined  in  one.  They  were  furnished  with 
a  movable  mattress  more  frequently  than  with 
a  nailed-on  upholstered  seat ;  but  many  of  them 
have  had  their  upholstery  altered  in  the  course 
of  the  centuries. 

The  banquette^  which  continues  also  to  be 
called  a  "  form,"  as  in  the  fourteenth  century,  is 
a  "  bench  of  no  great  consequence  placed  in  ante- 
chambers, porches,  etc.  "  ;  it  is  also  a  seat  easy 
to  move  about,  and  useful  as  enabling  a  large 
number  of  persons  to  sit  down  in  a  small  space. 
It  was  therefore  constantly  used  ^  for  fetes,  balls, 
concerts,  and  the  like.  The  Versailles  apartments 
were  sometimes  filled  with  them,  and  some  were 
very  costly  and  luxurious,  gilded,  stuffed  with  hair, 
and  covered  with  the  most  valuable  materials. 

The  bancelle  might  have  a  back  and  arms ; 
most  probably  a  very  low  back.  Bailee  lies — far 
from  handy  to  move,  these  particular  ones  ! — 
figured  among  the  prodigious  solid  silver  furni- 
ture set  the  King  kept  at  Versailles.    One  of  them, 

I  Bench  seats  could  already  be  hired  for  this  service. 


loo    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

standing  on  eight  pillar  legs,  weighed  no  less  than 
1,025  marcs  5  ounces,  or  251  kilogrammes — a 
quarter  of  a  ton  of  precious  metal. 

The  placet  or  tabouret  was  a  square-topped 
stool  (occasionally  round  or  oval),  mounted  on 
four  legs,  sometimes  on  X-shaped  legs,  stuffed 
(which  distinguished  it  from  the  all-wooden 
escabeait),  and,  it  might  be,  covered  with  tapestry 
or  the  finest  stuffs,  just  as  its  frame  might  be  of 
the  costliest  workmanship.  At  Versailles  and 
Marly  and  Fontainebleau  there  were  admirable 
examples,  and  no  wonder,  when  they  were  so 
passionately  sought  after  by  Duchesses.  And  we 
have  seen  four  tabourets  at  the  Doucet  sale  in 
19 1 2,  covered  simply  in  plain  velvet,  fetch  the 
wild  figure  of  28,500  francs. 

We  shall  doubtless  have  exhausted  the  catalogue 
of  seats  when  we  have  said  a  few  words  about 
folding  stools,  pliants  or  ployants.  These  too 
could  be  of  rare  magnificence — there  were  some 
at  Versailles  made  of  solid  silver — and  they  were 
frequently  more  complicated  than  might  be 
readily  imagined.  Some  had  a  rigid  frame,  webbed 
and  stuffed  with  hair  like  a  fixed  seat,  others  had 
arms  and  a  back.  One  variety  of  folding  chair 
was  the  perroquet  or  parrot,  "  a  kind  of  chair 
with  a  back,"  says  Furetiere,  "that  folds,  and 
which  is  generally  used  at  the  table."  At  a  time 
when  there  were  no  dining-rooms,  it  was  natural 
that  for  their  meals  people  should  have  chairs 
easy  to  bring  to  table  and  to  put  away  afterwards. 
Saint-Simon  informs    us   that  perroquets  were 


THE    CARREAU  loi 

also   used    to   increase    the    number  of  possible 
places  in  a  carriage. 

We  must  not  forget  the  carrcaiix,  or  more  or 
less  flat  cushions,  stuffed  with  horsehair  or  with 
down,  which  very  often  served  as  seats,  when 
strict  etiquette  allowed  you  neither  arm-chair 
nor  chair  nor  folding-stool,  or  simply  when  all 
of  them  were  lacking.  A  carreaa  planted  on 
the  floor  was  taken  without  ceremony  for  a  seat 
"  in  the  Spanish  fashion  "  ;  or  else  several  were 
piled  on  top  of  one  another,  a  tottering  edifice 
whose  instabihty  in  those  days,  when  rather  coarse 
jesting  was  in  fashion  in  every  circle,  lent  itself 
to  facetiousness  of  the  most  questionable  taste. 
The  Duchesse  de  Valentinois,  as  the  amiable 
Madame  de  Villedieu  tells  us,  had  a  "  rocaille 
room  adjoining  her  summer  apartments,  which 
was  without  a  doubt  the  most  delightful  place 
in  the  world.  It  had  no  other  furniture  but 
piles  of  carreaux  in  gold  cloth.''  Could  we  not 
almost  imagine  she  was  describing  a  little  ultra- 
modern drawing-room  in  the  twentieth  century  ? 

How  were  these  various  seats  covered  ?  With 
the  same  stuff  or  embroideries  as  the  beds,  if 
they  formed  part  of  the  furniture  set  of  a  chamber 
such  as  we  have  described.  In  that  case  the  seats 
were  looked  on  as  accessories  to  the  bed ;  very 
often  too  a  seat  or  a  group  of  seats  had  its  own 
private  attire,  without  any  relation,  either  in 
colour  or  material,  to  the  other  furniture.  As 
they  were  constantly  protected  by  means  of  loose 
covers  of  serge,  or,  in  elegant  interiors,  of  taffeta, 


102    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

morocco,  even  velvet  or  damask,  and  seeing  that 
they  w^ere  only  "uncovered" — the  regulation 
phrase — on  rare  occasions,  people  did  not  hesitate 
to  dress  them  in  the  most  delicate  stuffs,  of  the 
most  easily  fading  hues :  gold  brocade,  vi^hite 
Chinese  satin,  yellow  damask,  flesh-coloured 
moire,  aurora  Genoa  velvet  with  silver  ground — 
we  should  have  to  enumerate  afresh  the  whole 
catalogue  of  splendid  stuffs  on  which  the  subjects 
of  the  Sun-King  doted. 

Sometimes  one  material  only  is  used  for  a  seat, 
sometimes  two  different  silks  are  set  side  by  side 
in  stripes,  or  in  compartments,  in  the  same  way 
as  for  the  hangings  of  beds  and  walls ;  in  this 
case  the  seams  are  covered  with  braiding  of  gold 
or  silver  or  silk  outlining  the  compartments ;  the 
same  braid  hides  the  little  nails  that  fasten  the 
stuff  to  the  wooden  frame,  and  is  itself  fastened 
down  with  large  gilt  or  silvered  decorative  nails. 
The  dress  of  the  seat  is  often  finished  off  with  a 
long  fringe  of  silk  or  wool  running  round  the 
frieze  and  the  lower  edge  of  the  back,  when  it  is 
separated  from  the  seat,'  and  by  a  frangeon  or 
molet,  an  edging  fringe  the  threads  of  which  are 
too  short  to  hang  down.  A  further  fringe  in 
gold  or  silver  might  be  placed  above  this.  It  is 
easy  to  recognise  chairs  that  were  meant  to  have 
a  fringe,  for  just  above  the  legs  there  is  a  plain 
strip  of  wood,  almost  left  in  the  rough,  so  to  say, 
underneath  which  the  carving  or  mouldings 
begin ;  this  part  was  to  have  been  hidden  by 
I  Fig.  30. 


EMBROIDERIES  103 

the    fringe,     which    explains   why    it    was    not 
decorated- 
It  is  obvious  that   all  the  different   kinds   of 
embroidery,    gold    or    velvet,    silken    flowers   or 
satin,  pictures   in   "  satin  stitch  "   with   figures, 
picked    out    in    gold    and    silver,    taillure  em- 
broidery (now  known  as  applique),  etc.,  height- 
ened still  more  the  beauty  of  the  stately  kind  of 
seats.     Others  were  covered  with  tapestry  worked 
in  wool  and  in  silk  on  canvas  in  coarse    or  fine 
stitch  ;    the   subjects    of  these    tapestries   were 
large  flowers  (Fig.  31),  rinceaux  or  grotesques. 
Women  and  girls,  noble  and  middle-class   alike, 
devoted  to  these  labours  a  considerable  part  of 
their  days,  and  Madame  de  Maintenon  set  the 
example  to  her   "  dear  girls  "  of  Saint-Cyr.     We 
know  that  she  worked  at   her  tapestry  while  at 
the  King's  Council;    and  one   of    her   contem- 
poraries took  this  delicious  "  snapshot  "  of  her  one 
day,  when  he  saw  her  setting  out   for  a  drive. 
"  The  lady  was  barely  installed  in  her  carriage, 
before  the  coachman  had  whipped  up  his  horses, 
when  she  clapped  her  spectacles  on  her  nose  and 
pulled  out  the  work  she  had  in  her    bag."     A 
point  de  Hongrie^  or  herring-bone  stitch,  was 
also  in  high  favour,  sometimes  used  by  itself  to 
cover  the  seats,  sometimes  applied  in  strips  on  a 
ground  of  plain  colour.     We  remember  how,  in 
i\4vare,   when  Harpagon  is  unwittingly   nego- 
tiating a  usurious  loan  to  his  own  son,  he  insists  on 
making  him  take  a  thousand  crowns  in  ^Wuirdes, 
nippes  et  hiioux^''''  among  which,  along  with  the 


I04    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

famous  stuffed  crocodile,  there  is  "  a  four-foot 
bed  with  stripes  of  herring-bone  needlework  very 
neatly  applied  on  an  olive-coloured  material,  with 
six  chairs  and  the  counterpane  to  match  ;  the 
whole  in  excellent  condition  and  lined  with  a 
little  shot  red  and  blue  taffeta."  Point  de 
Chine  is  something  similar  Xo  point  de  Hougrie, 
but  done  with  rounded  horizontal  undulations 
instead  of  sharp-angled  chevrons,  and  the  point 
de  Turqiie  is  in  vertical  undulations.  Boileau 
had  in  his  cabinet  an  arm-chair  and  four  chairs 
covered  with  tapestry  in  this  "Turkey  stitch." 

It  was  at  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV 
that  the  first  seats  appeared  covered  with  high  warp 
or  low  warp  tapestry,  specially  made  for  the  pur- 
pose at  Aubusson  and  Felletin,  or  at  Beauvais. 

Stuffs  flocked  with  wool  were  also  employed 
for  this :  they  did  not  hesitate  to  cut  up  the 
finest  Oriental  carpets  for  the  purpose  ;  and  la 
Savonnerie  did  its  share  in  a  much  better  way,  by 
making  pieces  to  measure  and  to  order  from  the 
designs  of  Audran  or  Belin  de  Fontenay. 

Seats  meant  for  constant  use  were  covered 
with  commoner  stuffs,  such  as  moquette  or  tripe. 
Moquette  or  moquade,  imported  from  England 
under  the  name  of  English  carpeting,  but  which 
was  also  made  in  France,  was  in  those  days  a 
hairy-surfaced  stuff,  knotted  by  hand;  in  short,  a 
simplified  kind  of  Savonnerie  weave.  Moquette 
pied-court,  with  shorter  nap  and  smaller  design — 
when  there  was  any — than  those  meant  for 
carpets  underfoot,  was  used  especially  for  covering 


UTRECHT    VELVET        105 

seats,  though  it  was  also  employed  sometimes  for 
ordinary  hangings.  For  example,  in  the  Chateau 
de  Rambouillet  there  were,  in  1706,  a  great 
number  of  arm-chairs,  chairs  and  stools  done  in 
moquette,  striped  red,  white  and  green,  or  red, 
blue  and  aurora ;  and  the  arm-chairs  of  the 
Academie  Frangaise  (which,  by  the  way,  numbered 
thirty-six  and  not  forty,  as  vacancies  were  very 
shrewdly  counted  upon),  were  modestly  arrayed 
in  moquette,  at  any  rate  after  1678,  the  date 
when  the  service  des  Batiments  renovated  them 
at  a  cost  of  ten  livres  ten  sols  apiece.  The  first 
Utrecht  velvets,  manufactured  in  Holland  by 
Huguenot  refugees,  were  called  "  Utrecht  mo- 
quettes,"  although  they  were  genuine  goats' 
hair  velvet,  simply  because  they  were  used  in  the 
same  way  as  moquette.  Tripe  was  a  velvet  of 
wool  on  a  hemp  ground,  also  very  lasting,  in 
plain  colours,  and  made  in  Flanders. 

Lastly,  there  were  common  materials,  known 
by  the  general  name  of  etoffes  de  la  Porte, 
because  they  were  sold  by  the  Paris  gate,^  were 
used  to  cover  the  seats  in  small  rooms  u-ed  as 
clothes  closets,  offices,  servant's  rooms,  and  the 
rooms  of  the  lower  middle  classes.  They  included 
the  various  serges  of  Aumale,  of  Mony,  etc. ;  the 
damas  cafart,  or  false  damask,  which  in  wool  and 
cotton  simulated  silk  damask,  as  the  *'  Bruges 
satin  "  copied  the  beautiful  real  satins  as  well  as 
it  could,  and  so  on. 

I  Or  Chatelet  gate,  at  the  end  of  the  rue  Saint  Denis,  whence 
these  cheap  stuffs  were  also  called  "ctoffesclc  la  rue  Saint-Denis." 


io6    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

Leather,  while  less  in  favour  than  in  the  pre- 
ceding reigns,  is  still  met  with  fairly  often.  We 
must  not  confuse  scats  garnis  de  cuir  with 
those  covered  in  leather.  The  former  had  their 
frame,  both  seat  and  back,  stretched  with  thick 
leather  instead  of  webbing ;  on  this  leather  were 
laid  or  fastened  square  cushions  filled  with  hair, 
"to  keep  them  always  well  puffed  out,"  and 
covered  with  silks.  This  is  how  we  see  them  set 
down  in  inventories  and  in  the  reports  of  the 
affixing  of  seals :  "a  sofa  done  {^  garni)  in 
leather,  covered  with  crimson  damask."  Red, 
black  or  lemon  morocco,  or  black  calf,  were  used 
to  cover  seats  intended  to  take  their  place  in  the 
most  sumptuous  chambers,  as  neighbours  to  arm- 
chairs in  Venice  brocatelle  or  Genoa  velvet  ;  or 
else  they  were  covered  in  those  gilded  and 
gauffered  leathers  which  made  such  magnificent 
wall  coverings  ;  they  were  covered  lastly  with 
bull's  hide  martele,  or  decorated  with  little 
stamped  ornamentations,  or  again  ecorche^  incised 
and  engraved ;  they  were  covered  with  leather 
courtepointe^  ^  to  make  which  a  felt  was  placed 
between  two  skins  of  leather,  and  the  whole 
stitched  or  quilted  after  elaborate  designs. 

The  origin  of  caned  seats  is  obscure.  Among 
dealers  in  antiques — and  the  mistake  has  found 
its  way  into  more  than  one  book — the  name  of 
Louis  XIII  arm-chairs  or  chairs  is  given  to  caned 
seats  with  high  backs,  whose  florid  superabundant 
carving,  and,  in  particular,  the  highly  developed 

I  This  word  is  a  corruption  of  contrcpoinU. 


STRAW    CHAIRS  107 

blason,  declare  their  unmistakably  Flemish  or 
Dutch  origin.^  They  belong  in  reality  to  the 
Louis  XIV  period,  and  were  not  even  imported 
into  France  until  towards  the  end  of  the  century, 
for  there  seems  to  be  no  mention  of  them  in  any 
authorities  previous  to  1690.  Even  the  name 
for  this  new  fashion  of  fitting  seats  was  long  in 
becoming  fixed.  In  the  Livre  commode,  of 
1691,  we  read  :  "  Turners  who  sell  chairs  garnies 
de  jonc  et  de  paille  are  chiefly  to  be  found  in 
the  New  Market."  This  certainly  means  chairs 
done  with  rattan ;  do  we  not  still  call  a  rattan 
cane  a  canne  de  jonc  ?  Fifteen  years  later  the 
inventory  of  the  Chateau  de  Rambouillet  records : 
"  a  canape  de  Cannes  {sic)  " — a  "  sofa  of  canes  "  ; 
and  in  two  inventories  dated  in  the  same  year, 
1722,  we  read  in  the  one  :  "a  lacquered  chair  of 
wild  cherry  wood  and  openwork  boz's  de  canne,'''' 
and  in  the  other :  "  six  chairs  a  jonc  in  red 
wood."  The  foregoing  quotations  tell  us  all 
that  is  necessary ;  they  were  chairs  "  of  little 
consequence,"  of  beechwood  or  wild  cherry 
lacquered  or  dyed  red  ;  they  were  made,  not  by 
the  company  of  upholsterers  but  by  that  of  the 
"  master-turners  and  straw  chair  menders," 
which  does  not  prevent  their  being  made  of 
good  honest  joinery,  put  together  with  tenons 
and  mortices  well  and  duly  pinned,  nor  from 
being  often  very  well  carved  and  without  any 
turning.^      Caned    arm-chairs    and    chairs    were 

1  It  was  the  Dutch  who  introduced  rattan  into  Europe. 

2  Fig.  39. 


io8     LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

usually  fitted  with  cushions  covered  with  stuff 
and  tied  on  to  the  chair  with  cords. 

We  have  just  seen  that  the  turners  made 
straw  chairs.  It  seems  as  though  these  were 
hardly  ever,  in  the  first  half  of  the  century,  seen 
out  of  kitchens  or  monastery  cells.  The  ad- 
mirable picture  that  Philippe  de  Champaigne 
painted  in  1662  as  a  thank-offering,  when  his 
daughter  was  miraculously  cured  of  a  malignant 
fever  in  the  convent  of  Port-Royal  des  Champs, 
shows  us  the  young  nun  sitting  in  a  rude  straw 
arm-chair ;  another  chair  of  the  same  kind  is 
beside  her.  These  chairs  are  of  truly  conventual 
simplicity ;  when  they  came  among  the  laity 
they  were  called  chaises  a  la  capiicine,  but 
this  did  not  prevent  them  from  making  their 
way  into  the  richest  interiors  and  in  the  end 
conquering  a  place  at  the  Court.  The  sur- 
intendant  Foucquet  at  Vaux,  the  marechal 
d'Humieres  in  his  chateau,  the  Director  General 
of  Finance,  Fleuriau  d'Armenonville  at  Ram- 
bouillet,  did  not  scorn  these  humble  seats,  which 
were  in  any  case  very  comfortable  when  duly 
fitted  with  their  horsehair  and  down  cushions. 
Their  wooden  parts  were  very  simply  turned,  and 
painted  black,  green,  and  red.  There  were  some 
at  Versailles  :  "  six  straw  arm-chairs  "  are  quoted 
in  an  inventory  of  the  Crown  furniture,  "  in 
Chinese  lacquer,  with  cushions  of  red  damask  and 
their  flounce  of  the  same  damask,  with  fringe 
and  molet  of  gold  and  silver."  Under  the 
Regency  Saint-Simon  will  write  :   "  The  princes 


WOODEN    CHAIRS         109 

and  princesses  had  established  themselves,  to- 
wards the  latter  end  of  the  late  King,  on  little 
chairs  with  straw  fittings,  and  without  arms,  in 
order  to  avoid  offering  arm-chairs,  except  when 
there  was  no  way  of  dispensing  with  them  .  .  . 
so  that  these  little  straw  chairs,  introduced 
under  the  pretext  of  their  convenience  for 
gaming  or  working,  had  in  their  lodgings  be- 
come everybody's  seats  without  discrimination." 
Toilet  chairs,  or  chaises  a  pei^ner,  were  made  of 
straw. 

At  the  lowest  point  of  the  scale  were  the 
humble  chairs  all  in  wood,  those  of  which 
Diderot  will  write  in  his  Encyclopedia  :  "  wooden 
chairs,  such  as  were  formerly  used  in  middle-class 
houses,  and  are  now,  so  to  say,  relegated  to  the 
garden."  Here  is  one  '  of  a  Norman  type,  which 
is  not  lacking  in  richness,  and  discloses  an  obvious 
Dutch  or  Flemish  influence ;  and  here  is  the 
stout  rustic  chair  ^  found  everywhere  in  the 
Lorraine  country.  This  model  continued  to  be 
made  by  the  turners  of  Lorraine  and  the  Barrois 
country  till  well  into  the  nineteenth  century, 
but  it  could  not  have  changed  much  for  two  and 
a  half  centuries. 

1  Fig.  41. 

2  Fig.  40. 


THIRD    PART 
THE    REGENCY    STYLE 


PART  THREE : 

THE  REGENCY  STYLE 

The  so-called  Regency  style  is  hard  to  define,  for 
it  is  a  movement  and  not  a  stable  condition  of 
French  decorative  art ;  it  can  be  told  but  not 
described.  Where  can  it  be  seized?  At  vv^hat 
point  of  time?  Under  Louis  XIV  there  was,  so 
to  say,  a  period  of  standing  still,  let  us  say  from 
1670  to  1690,  if  definite  dates  are  desired,  during 
w^hich  a  style,  shaped  in  the  previous  decade  and 
now  matured,  had  remained  consistently  itself. 
There  were  to  be  again,  from  about  1720  to  1760, 
and  later  from  1770  to  1790,  two  similar  periods 
of  stability — the  years  of  the  hey-day  of  the 
Louis  XV  and  the  Louis  XVI  styles  respectively. 
But  from  1690  to  1720  we  were  in  full  career 
between  two  halting  points,  and  changes  were 
incessant.  It  was  so  towards  the  end  of  Louis 
XIV,  and  much  more  so  when  he  had  disappeared. 
A  regency  is  in  its  essence  a  period  of  the  pro- 
visional, a  moment  of  waiting  and  transition, 
everything  is  unstable.  This  was  especially  true 
of  the  regency  of  Philippe  d'Orleans,  who  "adored 
everything  novel  "  but  settled  on  nothing,  "in- 
capable "as  he  was  "  of  continuity  or  sequence 
in  anything  to  such  an  extent  that  he  could  not 
even  understand  that  such  things  were  possible." 
It  is  impossible  to  draw  a  picture  of  what  was 

113  H 


114    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

then  the  French  style,  unless  one  could  manage, 
like  the  so-called  Futurists,  to  represent  successive 
states  on  the  same  canvas:  the  utmost  we  could 
achieve  would  be  to  produce  a  series  of  snapshots. 
There  is  not  a  single  line,  not  a  motive  in  de- 
coration that  can  be  called  specifically  "  Regency  " 
in  style.  Some  are  Louis  XIV  elements  slightly 
modified  or  used  in  a  new  way ;  others  are  already 
Louis  XV,  and  what  constitutes  the  Regency 
style  is  merely  their  finding  themselves  side  by 
side  (and  in  any  case  almost  always  with  complete 
harmony),  on  the  same  piece  of  furniture,  the 
same  wainscoting,  the  same  goldsmiths'  work. 

Away  from  Versailles,  and  in  a  different  at- 
mosphere, the  Louis  XIV  style  became  modified, 
just  like  a  plant  transported  to  another  climate. 
This  air  was  already  to  be  found,  many  years 
before  171 5,  in  Paris,  at  the  Palais  Royal,  where 
the  family  of  Orleans  lived,  at  the  Temple,  which 
was  the  home  of  the  Vendomes,  in  coteries  like 
that  of  the  Marquise  de  Lambert,  among  powerful 
financiers  who  were  amateurs  and  patrons  of  the 
arts,  at  Sceaux,  where  the  little  Duchesse  de 
Maine  sought  to  find  distraction,  and  in  many 
other  free  surroundings  in  which,  aloof  from  and 
unknown  to  Louis  XIV,  a  new  spirit  was  de- 
veloping which  was  to  be  the  spirit  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  In  that  century  everybody 
lived  only  for  pleasure,  the  pleasure  of  the  senses, 
sometimes  of  the  most  refined  sort,  sometimes 
pursued  in  drunken  swinish  orgies,  even  by  the 
grandsons    and   granddaughters  of  kings,  or  the 


THE    NEW    SPIRIT         115 

choicest  pleasure  of  the  intellect  and  the  social 
amenities.  An  easy,  gay  life  was  eagerly  sought 
after,  and  everything  in  the  nature  of  con- 
straint was  loathed ;  things  heretofore  regarded 
as  sacrosanct  were  subject  to  impertinent 
criticism ;  everybody  delighted  to  be  epicurean. 
Montesquieu  knew  this  life  in  his  youth,  but 
soon  broke  away  from  it ;  Voltaire  knew  it,  and 
remained  for  ever  after  as  one  intoxicated  by  the 
dehcate  delights  he  had  tasted.  "  Nothing,"  he 
was  to  write  later,  "  nothing  is  to  be  compared 
to  the  pleasant  life  there  in  the  bosom  of  the  arts, 
and  of  a  tranquil,  delicate  voluptuousness  ;  people 
from  foreign  countries  and  kings  even  preferred 
this  idleness,  so  agreeably  occupied  and  so  en- 
chanting, to  their  mother  country  and  to  their 
throne.  .  .  .  The  heart  softened  and  dissolved 
as  aromatics  melt  gently  on  a  slow  fire  and  breathe 
out  their  souls  in  delicious  odours."  The  pleasure 
of  private  conversation,  intimate,  unconstrained, 
yet  carefully  chosen,  was  felt  at  this  moment 
with  a  rapture  that  is  most  strikingly  shown  in 
contemporary  letters  and  memoirs.  This  is  how, 
after  many  years,  a  frequent  guest  spoke  of  the 
dinners  of  Madame  de  Caylus,  the  dehghtful 
friend  of  Madame  de  Lambert :  "  She  instilled 
into  all  her  guests  a  joy  so  gentle  and  so  keen,  a 
feeling  of  such  noble  and  elegant  pleasure,  that 
people  of  every  age  and  every  disposition  appeared 
to  be  all  amiable  and  happy  alike."  That  is  the 
perfume  of  the  budding  eighteenth  century. 
In  this  keener,  yet  at  the  same  time  balmier 


ii6    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

and  warmer  air,  the  severe  Louis  XIV  style 
became  softened,  if  we  may  use  the  phrase,  and 
unbent.  Its  stiff  lines  were  here  and  there  dis- 
creetly inflected  and  broidered  with  a  dainty 
vegetation:  trailing  plants  entwined  about  them, 
and  little  flowery  sprays  shot  off  from  them,  and 
impudent  monkeys  clambered  on  to  porticos  to 
hang  their  swings  from  them. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  craftsmen  in  stone, 
wood  and  metal  no  longer  model  themselves  on 
the  King's  taste  ;  they  have  to  please  a  very  mis- 
cellaneous clientele,  business  folk  grown  wealthy, 
the  contractors  and  the  dancers  whom  they 
entertain,  the  grand  seigneurs  who  are  kind 
enough  to  come  and  enliven  their  mansions,  all 
this  set  offer  sacrifice  to  a  new  divinity,  the 
fashion.  Now  the  fashion  is  no  longer  for  the 
stately  and  the  heroic,  but  for  the  amiable  and 
the  gallant,  and  above  everything  for  all  that  is 
convenient  and  agreeable.  Two  adjectives  are 
more  and  more  becoming  stock  phrases  for  any- 
thing pleasing,  agreahle  and  joH.  The  grand 
has  become  exceedingly  stiff  and  pedantic.  A 
monumental  Louis  XIV  arm-chair  may  be  heaii, 
but  nobody  could  call  itjoli.  In  a  drawing-room 
there  is  nothing  agreahle  about  walls  cased  in 
marbles,  coldly  cut  out  in  ovals,  rectangles,  and 
plat-bands.  What  people  like  from  this  moment 
is  white  wainscoting  with  fine  gilded  reliefs ;  they 
will  have  "mythologies"  carved  on  it,  and  painted 
over  the  doors,  but  it  will  be^  Venus  and 
I  At  the  Hotel  de  Soubise,  in  the  princess's  state  chamber. 


NEW   THEMES  117 

Adonis^  Seinele  and  Jupiter^  Bacchus  and 
Ariadne,  Diana  and  Endymion,  and  the 
Graces  presiding  over  the  education  of  Love. 
Round  the  most  beautiful  salon  of  the  period  ^ 
there  will  run  a  series  of  the  romantic  scenes  of 
the  Loves  of  Psyche. 

These  mythological  themes  were  still  to  remain 
in  favour  for  a  long  time  as  decorations  for  fine 
houses,  and  we  know  how  much  they  were 
employed  by  the  Coypels,  La  Moyne,  and  Natoire 
before  the  days  of  Boucher  and  his  school — what 
other  or  what  better  pretext  could  there  be  for 
naked  figures  ?  But  they  were  no  longer  com- 
pletely sufficient.  Something  newer,  something 
more  amusing,  more  piquant,  was  sought  for,  and 
it  was  sought  for  in  Asia  and  in  the  Theatre  de 
la  Poire.  Bedrooms  and  drawing-rooms  re- 
mained the  domain  of  rosy  goddesses,  but  in  the 
new  style  of  small  rooms,  "conversation  cabinets," 
"coffee  cabinets,"  waiting  for  the  appearance  of 
"  boudoirs,"  which  was  not  to  be  long  delayed,  a 
whole  little  comic  world  suddenly  took  possession 
of  the  walls,  just  like  the  entrance  of  masqueraders 
in  a  fancy  dress  ba]l. 

We  have  shown  how  even  Versailles  in  all  its 
heroic  glory  had  opened  its  doors  to  quantities 
of  Chinese  fabrics  and  articles.  But  these  were 
only  movable  things,  that  would  have  vanished  in 
a  turn  of  the  hand  if  the  fashion  had  changed ; 

I  The  oval  drawing-room  in  the  same  hotel.  The  paintings 
were  only  finished  by  Natoire  in  1739;  but  the  whole  decoration 
was  conceived  by  Boffrand  more  than  twenty  years  earlier. 


ii8    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

never  till  now  had  China  been  embodied  in 
permanent  decorations.  This  final  seal  of  ap- 
probation began  to  be  conferred  from  the  end 
of  the  seventeenth  centur)^,  for  Monsieur  had  a 
Chinese  room  at  Saint  Cloud  in  1690,  and  it  was 
ratified  and  established  in  the  early  years  of  the 
next  century,  in  which  the  sons  of  Heaven  were 
to  be  seen  finding  their  place  even  in  tragedy, 
since  Voltaire  ventured  on  the  Orplielin  de 
Chine,  the  "Chinese  Orphan"!  The  very 
"cabinet  du  Roi,"  in  the  Chateau  de  la  Muette, 
was  a  Chinese  cabinet,  known  as  "  de  la  Chine," 
for  strangely  enough  the  adjective  chinois  was 
not  to  come  into  current  use  until  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  We  have  a  series  of 
engravings  of  this  cabinet,  which  was  by  no  means 
unworthy  of  being  ascribed,  as  for  a  long  time  it 
was,  to  the  great  Watteau. 

The  Far  East  was  beginning  to  be  a  little 
better  known,  thanks  to  the  narratives  of  certain 
eminent  travellers,  Tavernier,  who  had  been  to 
Turkey,  Persia,  and  the  Indies ;  Chardin,  who  had 
visited  India  and  Persia ;  thanks  also  to  those 
embassies  that  were  so  successful  from  the  point 
of  view  of  interest ;  that  from  Siam,  in  1686,^  and 
later,  the  Persian  embassy,  by  which,  if  Saint- 
Simon  is  to  be  believed,  the  old  King  allowed 
himself  to  be  hoaxed  like  a  simple  M.  Jourdain. 
And  so  in  the  same  way  as  chinoiseries,  tur- 
queries    and  persaneries,  began  to  be  all   the 

I  It  is  true  that  the  Prime  Minister  of  the  King  of  Siam  was 
called  the  Grand  Vizier  ! 


ORIENTALISM  119 

fashion  in  literature  and  in  the  theatre.  Galland 
translated  the  Thousand  and  One  Nights^ 
Dufresny  points  out  the  way  to  Montesquieu, 
with  his  Ainiiseuients  serieux  et  comiques  d''nn 
Siamois.  As  for  the  decorators,  they  painted,  in 
the  midst  of  panels  of  fantastic  architecture  and 
impossible  flowers,  Turks  of  every  kind,  sultans 
and  odalisques,  muphtis  with  monstrous  turbans, 
dervishes  with  long  robes ;  but  none  of  them 
was  much  more  authentically  Turkish  than  the 
Bourgeois  gentilhomme  when  he  was  made 
Mamamouchi.  They  painted  Hindoos,  but 
Hindoos  that  came  out  of  the  hides  Galantes, 
Persians  no  more  Persian  than  Usbeck  and  Rica, 
and  above  everything  and  at  every  point  they 
painted  Chinese.  And  these  Chinese  brought 
with  them  the  appropriate  accessories,  dragons, 
parasols,  peacock  feathers,  towers  with  turned  up 
roofs,  humpy  bridges,  strange  rocks,  old  rotted 
stumps  of  willow-trees,  with  the  light  shov^ing 
through  holes :  motives  that  before  long  entered 
into  every  kind  of  decoration,  Chinese  or  not, 
and  mingled  with  the  classic  Louis  XIV  motives. 
The  Chinese  parasol  cut  in  two,  which  frequently 
occurs  in  Watteau's  decorative  panels,  probably 
was  the  origin  of  the  "bat's  wing"  motive. 

At  the  same  time  as  all  these  outlandish  doll 
figures,  the  new  way  of  decoration  scattered 
broadcast  almost  over  everything,  from  hand- 
screens  to  wainscoting,  and  from  snuff-boxes  to 
great  tall  many-leaved  screens,  that  gay,  exquisite 
fairy-like  humanity,  the  dramatis  tersonce  that 


120    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

Watteau  created  with  his  poetic  genius  out  of 
the  elements  he  found  in  the  Comedie  italienne. 
The  ItaUan  players,  who  were  then  at  the  Hotel 
de  Bourgogne,  were  brutally  expelled  in  1697  for 
having  dared  to  announce  a  piece  called  La 
Faiisse  prude  :  could  such  a  title  belong  to 
anything  but  a  personal  satire  against  Madame 
de  Maintenon?  But  Paris  loved  its  Italians, 
Arlequin  and  Scaramouche,  Colombine  and  Silvia, 
Mezzetin,  the  endless  serenader,  and  Gilles,  ever 
livid,  pale,  and  abashed.  The  actors  of  the  booths 
at  the  fairs  took  up  the  French  pieces  of  the 
Italian  mummers,  and  when  he  became  Regent, 
one  of  the  first  things  Philippe  d'Orleans  did  was 
to  recall  them.  Gillot  painted  and  engraved 
them  from  life,  Watteau  transfigured  them  and 
gave  them  immortality,  conferring  on  them 
French  nationality  at  the  same  time.  Last  of  all, 
we  may  remind  ourselves  of  the  simian  tribe  and 
their  frolics,  already  introduced  by  Berain  into 
his  grotesques.  All  these  are  the  far  from  grave 
or  stately  themes  with  which  the  new  decoration 
was  to  be  inspired. 

We  must  go  into  a  few  details  as  to  the 
softening  and  mellowing  of  the  Louis  XIV  style. 
Symmetry  continued  to  be  respected,  until 
RocaiUe  came  in  and  wantonly  turned  every- 
thing topsy  tur\y,  but  it  was  only  symmetry 
horizontally  considered  ;  vertically  there  were,  for 
example,  hardly  any  regular  wainscoting  panels 
or    doors   to  be  seen.^     Rectangular  mouldings 

I  Figs.  42  and  43. 


MODIFICATIONS  121 

were  still  employed  as  framings  for  these  panels, 
but  they  are  less  important,  finer,  and  less  strong 
in  relief ;  and  inside  this  frame  everything  was 
emancipated  and  softened,  the  right  angles  are 
masked  by  being  hollowed  out,  or  with  a  shell,  or 
a  fioret  motive ;  the  stiffness  of  the  mouldings  is 
broken  up  by  a  ribbon,^  or  by  an  acanthus  motive 
twining  in  a  spiral  about  a  bundle  of  reeds,  or  by 
a  line  of  beading  ;^  or  light  motives  starting  out 
of  the  frame  are  embossed  on  the  plain  surface  of 
the  panel. ^  If  a  panel  is  arched  at  the  top,  the 
arch  is  divided  into  two  C-shaped  motives  ending 
in  a  crook,^  often  separated  by  a  floret,  zpahiiette^ 
or  a  shell. ^  The  '' cintre  a  ressauts'"  loses  its 
ressaults  and  becomes  the  continuous  "hat"- 
shaped  or  S-shaped  curve,  said  to  have  been 
invented  by  Cressent  as  far  as  its  use  on  a  pedi- 
ment is  concerned.^  At  other  points  this  line 
becomes  modified  in  various  ways.^  The  bottom 
of  panels,  very  frequently  in  wainscoting,  occa- 
sionally in  articles  of  furniture,^  was  bounded  by 
a  line  com.posed  of  two  S-curves  set  end  to  end.' 
A  little  later  there  was  adopted,  for  the  top  of 
panels   of    furniture    with   two   doors,  the    un- 


I  Fig, 


43- 


2  Fig.  43. 

3  Fig.  43- 

4  Fig.  10. 

5  Fig.  42  (inner  framing  of  the  top  panel),  and  Fig.  50. 

6  Fig.  47. 

7  Fig.  45  (the  bottom  panel),  and  Fig.  49. 

8  Fig.  10. 

9  This  same  line  is  found  on  the  uppermost  edge  of  the  head 
and  foot  of  the  bed  in  Fig.  60. 


122     LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

symmetrical  shape '  that  was  to  be  one  of  the 
most  unvarying  characteristics  of  the  Louis  XV 
style,  and  retained  even  right  into  the  nineteenth 
century  by  country  joiners  in  all  the  provinces. 
At  the  same  time,  the  top  of  cupboard  or  side- 
board doors  sometimes  assumed  an  incurved 
shape.^ 

The  C-shaped  motive,  the  simple  "  basket- 
handle  "  [aiise  de  panier)  of  former  days,  was 
modified  and  became  the  /laricot  motive  beloved 
of  the  Louis  XV  style.  We  have  already  seen  it 
making  its  appearance  on  panelHng  that  was 
still  "very  Louis  XIV":  for  instance,  in  the 
central  rosette  of  the  panel  in  Fig.  i.  The 
outer  edge  of  the  haricot  or  bean  became 
denticulated,  pinked,  pleated,  or  goffered  ;  it  is 
like  that  of  certain  shells,  the  murex  or  the 
limpet. 2  This  denticulation  sometimes  tapers 
out  and  curves  in  such  a  way  that  it  becomes 
impossible  to  tell  whether  it  is  a  wing,  a  flame, 
or  a  spaniel's  tail.  A  lozenge  pattern  with  a 
tiny  flower  or  dots  was  always  a  favourite  as  a 
ground  decoration ;  '*  it  obeys  the  law  of  general 
softening ;  the  lines  defining  the  lozenges  are 
often  flattened  curves,  and  the  lozenges  diminish 
towards  one  side. 

We  have  already  had  occasion  to  call  attention 
to  the  motives  taken  from  living  creatures  that 

1  Fig.  48:  top  of  the  doors  of  tho  upper  part. 

2  Fig.  47. 

3  Pediment  of  sideboard,  Fig.  48,  top  of  doors  of  sideboard 
Fig.  50. 

4  Table  in  Fig,  59,  chairs  in  Figs,  ^l  and  72. 


VARIOUS    MOTIVES       123 

made  their  appearance  at  this  moment,  the 
espagnolettes  of  the  Watteau  style,  found  at  the 
head  of  the  legs  of  tables,  the  top  corners  of 
screens,  in  certain  elaborate  motives  of  keyhole 
escutcheons ;  ^  the  monkeys  which  are  ever 
readily  employed  to  finish  off  the  upright  sides 
of  frames  ;  ^  the  dragons  which,  by  reason  of  their 
unreahty  and  their  arbitrary  shape,  constitute  a 
priceless  resource  for  hard  pressed  decorators  : 
they  are  to  be  found  especially  in  the  somewhat 
lax  compositions  of  the  Rocaille  style.  The 
great  Cressent,  however,  has  made  use  of  them. 
The  shell  motive  is  no  less  frequent  than  in  the 
Louis  XIV  style,  but  it  is  elaborated,  pierced, 
and  modified  in  many  ways.^ 

The  acanthus  leaf  continues  to  render  excellent 
service  ;  it  is  often  lengthened  and  more  indented, 
less  broad  than  previously  ;  it  attains  the  highest 
pitch  of  suppleness.  A  "  feuille  d'eau  "  (water 
leaf),  as  though  folded  double  and  seen  in  profile, 
with  vaguely  waved  edge,  and  ribs  strongly 
marked  or  replaced  by  grooves,  serves  as  accom- 
paniment to  the  edge  of  the  friezes  of  tables  or 
simple  chairs.^  Light  flowerets  scatter  themselves 
almost  everywhere,  flowers  of  no  definite  species, 
with  four  or  five  petals  ;  and  convolvuli  go 
clambering    over    the    mouldings.     The     most 

1  Fig.  54. 

2  Fig.  85. 

3  See,  for  instance,  the  three  large  shells  pierced  with  holes  in 
the  original  and  charming  sofa  shown  in  Fig.  75. 

4  The  same  sofa  of  Fig.  75,  on  each  side  of  the  tops  of  the 
legs;  arm-chair,  Fig.  74. 


124    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

current,  the  "  stock  "  motive  of  the  period,  is 
the  upright  shell,  from  whose  base  start  two  long 
acanthus  sprays.^ 

The  taste  for  attributes  goes  on  increasing. 
They  become  less  heroic  and  more  familiar : 
gardening  tools,  implements  of  pastoral  life,  of 
the  chase  and  fishing,  of  music  and  other  arts ; 
there  are,  of  course,  the  arms  and  symbols  of 
Love — torches,  wreaths  of  roses,  bows,  arrows 
and  quivers. 

As  for  technique,  we  must  report  the  almost 
complete  abandonment  for  a  time  of  ebony, 
which  was  to  recover  a  certain  amount  of  favour 
under  Louis  XVI.  The  old  master,  Andre 
Charles  Boulle,  went  on,  however,  building  his 
sumptuous  marquetry  pieces,  and  his  sons  after 
him,  for  certain  amateurs  of  austere  tastes  prided 
themselves  on  having  a  few  specimens  in  their 
cabinet  or  collection  ;  ^  Boulle  pieces  were  the 
only  articles  of  a  past  style  that  were  sought  after 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
That  period,  indeed,  was  wholly  innocent  of 
"■  antiquomania,"  to  the  greater  benefit  of  art 
and  artists ;  it  was  far  too  creative  to  contract 
this  disease.  But  the  fashion  was  frankly  for 
veneering  and  marquetry  in  exotic  woods,  with 
appliques  of  gilt  bronze ;  and  particularly  for 
amaranth  wood,  which  is  a   winy  red  kind   of 


1  Table,  Fig.  59.    Arm-chairs,  Figs.  70,  73,  ^^,  etc. 

2  This  is  a  third  meaning  attached  to  the  word  "cabinet":  a 
collection  of  curiosities  and  works  of  art.  People  spoke  of  the 
cabinet  Crozat,  the  cabinet  la  Live  rather  than  the  galcne. 


REGENCY    BRONZES      125 

mahogany,   and   for    violet    wood,    of    a    violet 
brow^n  with  w^ell  defined  lighter  veining. 

The  bronzes  of  the  Regency  style,  for  example 
those  of  Cressent's  most  successful  models,  have 
one  very  great  merit,  the  same  as  those  of  the 
Louis  XV  period,  when  the  cabinet-maker  did  not 
let   himself  be  drawn  away  into  an  exaggerated 
display  of  richness ;  a  merit  of  which  the  Louis 
XVI  bronzes  fall  short,  and  which  was  only  half 
attained  by  those  on  Boulle  pieces.     This  merit 
consists  in  the  fact  that  they  serve  some  definite 
purpose ;    they    are  not   mere  ornaments ;  each 
one  has  its  reason  for  existing,  and  for  being  just 
where  it  is.     Let  us  examine  one  of  those  admir- 
able flat  bureaux  by  Cressent,  for  example,  the 
masterpiece  now  in  the  Louvre  after  long  service 
at  the  Ministere  de  la  Guerre.     For  bronzes  it 
has  a  quart  de  rond*  reinforced  at  the  corners, 
running   round    the    top,    of   great    efficacy  to 
protect  an  exposed  edge  from  knocks ;  enframing 
mouldings  on  the  front  of  the  drawers,  which 
strengthen   the  joints  of   a  part  that   has  much 
work  to  do  ;    handles   {inains  *)  which  are   in- 
dispensable to  pull  out  the  drawers  conveniently  ; 
keyhole    escutcheons   to    prevent  the  keys  from 
damaging  the  wood ;  large  bronzes  fixed  to  the 
inner  side  of  the  permanent  frame  of  the  drawers 
on  each  side ;  they   soften  an   arris   that    might 
endanger  the  legs  of   the  person  seated  at  the 
bureau ;    at    the    top    of   each    leg   there    is  an 
espagnoiette,  forming  a  chute  or  drop,  and  pro- 
tecting the  most  projecting  part  of  the  legs ;  a 


126    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

fine  fillet  running  the  whole  length  of  the  arrises 
of  the  legs,  to  keep  the  veneer  from  being  ripped 
off  just  where  it  runs  most  danger,  since  the 
films  of  thin  wood  meet  there  at  an  angle  ;  and 
lastly,  chatissons  or  sabots,  casings  covering  the 
extremities  of  the  legs,  and  fulfilling  this  same 
purpose  of  protection. 

More  carving  is  to  be  seen  on  modest  furni- 
ture: the  copious  moulding  of  the  Louis  XIII 
and  Louis  XIV  styles,  so  well  calculated  to 
accentuate  the  great  straight  lines,  is  hardly- 
attractive  now,  and  no  longer  seems  sufficient 
decoration  for  a  cupboard  or  a  buffet  to  which  a 
certain  finish  has  been  given. 


It  remains  for  us  to  review  briefly,  with 
comments  on  our  illustrations,  the  different  items 
of  furniture,  such  as  were  made  for  simple 
business  people,  perhaps  aheady  for  well-to-do 
country  folk,  in  what  we  have  allowed  to  pass 
as  the  "  Regency  period " ;  but  we  have  no 
hesitation  in  repeating  once  again  that  any  clas- 
sifications into  the  Louis  XIV  style,  the  Regency 
style,  the  Louis  XV  style,  are  purely  arbitrary  and 
in  no  way  correspond  with  an  exact  chronology. 
We  are  fully  persuaded,  for  example,  that  nearly 
all,  if  not  all,  of  the  panelled  furniture  reproduced 
in  this  volume,  which  may  legitim.ately  be 
labelled  "Regency"  for  its  hybrid  style,  was 
made  after  1723  by  provincial  joiners  who  never 
followed  at  the  heels  of  fashion. 


CUPBOARDS  127 

Cupboards  still  continued  to  show  the  majesty 
and  the  calm  lines  of  the  Louis  XIV  style  ;  their 
vertical  arrises  were  rounded  off ;  ^  the  cornice 
was  straight,  less  important,  sometimes  already 
en  chapeau  ;  vertical  symmetry  had  disappeared, 
and  the  bottom  frequently  displayed  lines  that 
were  frankly  Louis  XV:  the  lower  traverse  in 
front  was  heavily  festooned  in  a  complicated 
design,  and  the  feet  are  "doe's  feet"  (pied  de 
hidie)?  This  is  an  error  in  taste;  by  true  rules 
— and  the  rule  here  is  simply  logic — the  upper 
parts  of  a  monument,  for  these  are  veritable 
monuments,  should  be  lighter,  airier,  so  to  say, 
than  the  base,  and  may  be  less  simple ;  here  it  is 
the  contrary,  and  these  curved  and  elegant  feet 
are  somewhat  slender  to  support  such  a  mass,  or 
at  any  rate  they  convey  that  impression  to  the 
eye.  This  goes  some  way  to  spoil  the  superb 
cupboard  from  Provence,  seen  in  Fig.  44,  the 
doors  of  which  are  carried  out  to  perfection,  with 
their  fine  carvings  setting  off  so  well  the  handsome 
outline  of  the  plain  panels.  The  Lorraine  cup- 
board of  Fig.  46,  fairly  rustic  in  character,  has 
something  harsh  and  angular  about  it,  which  is, 
if  one  may  say  so,  racy  of  the  soil. 

Let  us  note  that  the  whole  fa9ade  of  certain 
large  furniture  was  carved,  doubtless  in  imitation 
of  the  facades  of  commodes.  This  is  a  strange 
refinement  in  the  case  of  modest  pieces,^  for  it 

1  Figs.  44  and  46. 

2  Figs.  44  and  46. 

3  Fig.  47. 


128     LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

greatly  increases  the  difficulty  of  the  work  and 
the  quantity  of  material  needed ;  but  in  the 
eighteenth  century  both  craftsmanship  and 
materials  were  cheap  !  Dresser-sideboards  made 
their  appearance  in  the  provinces,  for  the  bright 
colours  and  great  decorative  value  of  earthenware, 
which  was  then  being  manufactured  in  abundance, 
speedily  inspired  the  desire  to  display  it  when 
not  in  actual  use.  The  handsomest  are  to  be 
found  in  the  east  of  France  :  tall,  wide — often 
much  wider  than  their  height — elaborate,  very 
convenient,  they  combine  in  one  highly  archi- 
tectural simple  piece  the  cupboard,  the  commode, 
and  the  set  of  shelves.^  In  the  western  provinces 
they  are  narrower,  simpler,  with  a  rather  shabby 
upper  part,^  but  always  very  useful  to  give  a 
country  dining-room  the  gaiety  we  delight  in, 
and  also,  be  it  said,  to  satisfy  our  mania  for 
display.  Have  we  not,  indeed,  demonstrated  that 
where  porcelain  is  concerned  this  mania  was  at 
least  as  great  two  centuries  ago  as  it  is  to-day  ? 

The  coffer  ends  its  once  glorious  career 
obscurely  in  the  depths  of  the  country  districts. 
Even  the  country  people  themselves  began  to 
discard  it  more  and  more,  and  the  latest  examples 
are  nearly  always  without  decoration.^  And  yet 
there  are  still  a  few  interesting  ones  to  be  found 
in  Brittany  and  the  Vosges,  which  are  strongly 
marked  with  the  characteristics  of  the  period. 

1  Fig.  49. 

2  Fig.  50. 

3  Figs.  52  and  53- 


THE    COMMODE  129 

The  commode  was  given  a  new  shape,  which 
in  a  sHgiitly  improved  version  was  to  continue 
until  the  coming  of  the  Louis  XVI  style ;  this 
was  the  shape  known  as  "  the  Regency."  '  Let 
us  note,  by  the  way,  that  it  was  at  this  period  that 
names  began  to  be  given  to  the  various  varieties 
of  furniture  :  a  proof  that  these  varieties  were 
becoming  numerous,  and  also  that  furniture  had 
entered  the  realms  of  fashion.  Thus,  there  appear 
for  a  moment  certain  sub-species,  commodes  a  la 
Cliartres^  a  la  Bagnolet,  a  la  Charolais^ 
and  o.hers  besides.  The  Regency  commode  is 
massive  and  bulging,  its  lines  are  heavy,  its 
rotundities  are  excessive ;  the  Louis  XV  period 
will  correct  this  and  bring  it  to  perfection. 
Under  the  marble  top,  a  first  stage  of  one  or  two 
drawers  has  a  concave  facade,  the  middle  stage  is 
strongly  convex,  the  lower  part  is  curved  back, 
which  gives  the  whole  a  "doe's  foot"  {pied  de 
biche)  outline,  but  with  an  exaggerated  pro- 
jection of  its  convex  curve,  which  is  also  placed 
too  low  down.  The  sides  show  the  same  swelhng 
line:  to  be  completely  truthful,  it  is  ugly.  The 
design  is  not  so  contorted  in  plane  as  in  profile  ; 
the  fa9ade  is  slightly  rounded.  The  bronzes 
are  rich  and  appropriately  abundant.  These 
commodes  all  have  the  air  of  having  been  made 
for  the  profiteers  of  the  rue  Quincampoix.  How 
much  more  elegant  are  those  which  were  satisfied 
with  a  plain  vertical  front,  slightly  curved,  and 

I  Fig.  54. 


I30    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

perpendicular  sides !  ^  The  one  here  reproduced 
has  bronzes  that  are  frankly  "■rocaille,"  but  the 
handles,  which  now  are  fixed  and  no  longer 
hanging,  stijl  have  a  certain  symmetry.  It  is  to 
be  observed  that  commodes  of  this  period  show 
their  division  into  stages  very  clearly  marked 
(often  by  a  heavy  horizontal  groove  lined  with 
brass),  a  thing  that  is  too  often  lacking  in  the 
periods  that  follow. 

Clocks  may  well  figure  here,  with  panelled 
furniture,  for  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century  they  became  real  pieces  of  furniture. 
The  invention  of  the  pendulum  by  Huyghens, 
about  the  middle  of  the  century,  had  brought 
about  an  enormous  increase  in  the  numbers  of 
clocks  by  making  them  infinitely  more  accurate. 
Small  table  clocks  had  disappeared,  because  people 
began  to  carry  watches,  and  religieuses,  or  clocks 
meant  to  be  fixed  against  the  wall,  had  taken 
their  place.  These  had  a  short  pendulum  and 
a  spring,  in  which  case  they  were  set  on  a 
bracket  or  a  pedestal  against  the  wall,  or  had 
weights,  in  which  case  they  were  carried  on  a 
little  shelf  pierced  with  holes  to  let  the  cords 
run  through.  When  the  long  pedulum  became 
common,  it  needed  protection  as  well  as  the 
weights,  and  so  the  box  containing  the  works  and 
the  pedestal  that  carried  it  were  united  :  the 
tall  clock  was  born  and  very  soon  became  common ; 
it  was,  and  still  is,  when  it  has  not  been  sold  to 
some  antique  dealer  and  replaced  by  the  horrible 
I  Fig.  55- 


TABLES  131 

American  or  German  alarm  clock,  the  modest 
luxury  of  the  homes  of  our  peasants.  Among  all 
the  objects  that  surround  it  the  clock  is  the  only- 
one  endowed  with  movement,  and,  in  a  sort,  with 
life ;  and  a  deep  instinct  impelled  the  first 
makers  of  these  tall  cased  clocks  to  make  that  life 
as  manifest  as  possible.  Hence  the  window  that 
allows  us  to  see  the  solemn  swinging  to-and-fro 
of  the  great  pendulum  with  its  disc  of  shining 
brass.  The  cases  of  Louis  XIV  and  Regency 
clocks  generally  have  vertical  sides,  but  are  some- 
times given  a  more  elegant  and  expressive  shape, 
outlining  the  figure  traced  in  space  by  the 
movement  of  the  pendulum.  The  case  most 
frequently  terminates  above  in  an  arched  pedi- 
ment, sometimes  flanked  by  two  little  vases  or 
spike  ornaments  in  brass. ^ 

At  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV  tables 
became  lighter  and  simpler,  in  obedience  to  the 
general  tendency  to  make  everything  that  has  no 
imperative  reason  for  being  big  and  heavy 
smaller  and  easy  to  handle.  P'lorentine  stone- 
work is  out  of  fashion,  and  for  costly  drawing- 
room  tables  people  prefer  a  top  of  one  single 
slab  of  fine  marble,  portor,  Aleppo  breccia,  Antin 
marble.  Wall  consoles  retain  their  elaborate 
structure  ;  they  must  have  extremely  rich  orna- 
mentation, because  they  are  placed  at  the  foot  of 
a  pier  glass,  and  under  the  panel  of  a  reflecting 
mirror  they  must  needs  play  the  part  of  a 
cul-de-lampe,    or    tail    piece   answering   to  the 

I  Figs.  56  and  57. 


132    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

painted  or  carved  ornamentation  above  the 
mirror.  But  tables  to  stand  out  in  the  room, 
even  when  they  are  of  great  size,  no  longer  have 
stretchers. 

No  more  "  tvvdsted  legs  "  ;  turnery  is  despised. 
No    more    pedestal   legs  ;    the    straight    line   is 
beginning  to  be  a  bore.     Console   legs   become 
simpler  and  similar   to  pieds   de  hiche^   which 
themselves  assume   more  slender,  more    elegant 
lines.     Until  the  Louis  XVI  style  did  away  with 
this  elegant  shape,  it  was  indiscriminately  known 
as  console  leg  or   doe's  foot  leg.     These   table 
legs,  and  the   same  applies  to  the  legs  of  chairs, 
are  set  obliquely  and  not  en  fagade ;  to  speak 
more  accurately — the  reader  will  kindly  excuse 
these    pedantic    phrases — their  median  plane  is 
oblique  with  reference  to  that    of   the   fa9ade, 
instead  of  being  at  right  angles  to  it.     Let  us  for 
the  sake  of  simplicity  call  them  "  obHque  legs." 
Their  lines  join  up  with  those  of  the  frieze  by  an 
unbroken  moulding.     'Wit  pied  de  ^zc//^,  instead 
of  ending  with  the  shape  of  a  cloven  hoof,  begins 
to  be  terminated  by  a  little  volute,  a  last  memory 
of  the  console,  standing  on  a  cube,  and  with  an 
acanthus  leaf  springing  up  from  it.     The  chute, 
or  drop  at  the  top  of  the  leg,  is  a  palmette  or  a 
shell,  from  which  starts  a  leaf,  an  acanthus  floret, 
or  a  plaited  motive.     The  contour  of  the  frieze 
is  more  or  less  shaped  with  S-curves  alternating 
with  C-curves.     1  he  two  little  tables  reproduced 
here  ^  are,  in  sum,  completely  Louis  XV  in  their 
I  Figs.  58  and  59. 


BEDS  133 

lines,   and    still    Louis    XIV    by    their    carved 
decoration. 

The  state  bed  still  continued  its  existence,  like 
the  love  of  costly  stuffs,  but  it  is  a  kind  of 
sumptuousness  that  is  drawing  near  its  end. 
Henceforth  there  are  a  salon  or  two — the  great 
drawing-room  and  the  salon  de  coinpagnie^ 
which  is  smaller  and  more  intimate — or  even 
more,  for  the  reception  of  guests,  and  a  dining- 
room,  so  that  no  one  is  impelled  by  vanity  to 
spend  enormous  sums  on  a  bed.  As  rooms  are 
now  smaller,  less  open  to  the  winds  and  better 
heated,  it  is  no  longer  essential  that  the  bed  should 
be  hermetically  enclosed.  And  so,  little  by  little, 
it  ceased  to  be  a  four-poster,  first  in  Paris  and 
later  at  Versailles,  where  the  sovereigns  had  bed- 
chambers that  were  truly  arctic.  It  was  not 
until  1 743  that  Marie  Leczinska  had  a  "  duchess  "- 
shaped  summer  bed — we  know  this  from  the 
Due  de  Luynes,  who  would  never  have  left  such 
a  change  unrecorded  in  his  diary — and  in  vdnter 
she  continued  to  sleep  in  a  four-poster.  The 
bed  in  the  King's  chamber  remained  a  four- 
poster  until  the  Revolution.  The  general  adop- 
tion of  the  duchess-bed  and  the  angel-bed  brings 
about  the  reappearance  of  beds  with  the  wood 
showing,  which  sometimes  have  head  and  foot 
boards  of  the  same  height ;  ^  but  as  a  rule  the 
angel-bed  has  the  foot-board  lower  than  the 
head.     These  beds  with  the  wood  showing  are 

I  Fig.  60.  The  sunk  lozenge  on  the  cartouche  above  the 
dossier  is  the  made,  the  chief  emblem  in  the  arms  of  the  Rohans, 


134    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

in  any  case  very  rare,  and  other  kinds  have  not 
been  preserved.  Altogether,  hardly  any  beds  of 
the  Regency  period  have  come  down  to  us. 

It  is  quite  different  vv^ith  regard  to  chairs, 
which  are  still  very  numerous.  We  are  given  the 
impression  that  Louis  XIV  chairs  and  arm-chairs 
suddenly,  almost  over-night,  were  regarded  as 
old  rubbish  and  replaced,  so  to  speak,  in  a  lump, 
more  quickly  than  other  furniture,  because  they 
were  less  costly  and  were  more  directly  connected 
with  the  desire  for  comfort  then  becoming 
general.  It  was  with  them  as  with  the  tables, 
they  became  smaller,  lighter,  easier  to  move 
about,  and,  above  all,  more  comfortable.  The 
study  of  arm-chairs  gives  us  the  most  complete 
scale  of  intermediate  shades  between  the  pure 
Louis  XIV  style  and  that  of  Louis  XV.  At  one 
end  is  the  great  arm-chair,  immovable  or  nearly 
so,  rectilinear,  geometrical,  curling  up  its  volutes 
with  all  the  emphatic  rhetoric  of  a  Flechier 
rolling  out  his  periods,  and  seeming  to  say  to 
you  :  "  Go  your  ways,  you  that  are  neither  Duke 
nor  Peer  !  "  and  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale  the 
little  Louis  XV  cabriolet  chair,  wholly  inviting, 
all  in  supple  elusive  lines,  the  back  snugly  em- 
bracing your  shoulders,  its  wood  everywhere 
visible,  made  to  be  moved  with  one  hand  without 
interrupting  the  conversation ;  between  these 
two  is  every  imaginable  hybrid  shape. 

Here  is  one,"  which  with  everything  else  in 
the  style  has  a  back  slightly  lower  and  with  a 

I  Fig.  .61. 


CHAIRS  135 

tendency  to  be  "  hat  "-shaped  ;  here  one  ^  with 
the  volutes  of  the  arms  atrophied,  and  another 
with  none  at  all ;  here  are  the  7najichettes 
(pads)  3  to  soften  the  hardness  of  the  arms  ;  and 
here  '^  is  a  great  change,  on  which  we  may  pause 
for  a  moment,  the  first  arms  set  back  on  the  seat. 
In  171 7  there  arrived,  from  England,  it  is  said, 
the  fashion  of  panniers.  "  These  panniers  are  a 
frame  of  whalebone,  or  sometimes  of  wicker, 
covered  with  linen  and  put  by  women  under  their 
skirts,  and  by  men  in  their  coat-skirts,  to  keep 
them  stiff  and  standing  out.  The  machine  is 
considerably  developed  at  each  side  of  the  wearer, 
bat  very  little  at  front  and  back,  so  that  a  lady 
with  her  slender  waist  and  huge  panniers  looks 
like  a  washerwoman's  paddle."  The  poor  women 
bundled  up  with  this  were  never  able  to  find 
room  in  an  arm-chair ;  so  they  were  perforce 
reduced  to  chairs,  as  their  great-great-grand- 
mothers had  been  by  their  farthingales.  A 
gallant  upholsterer  of  an  ingenious  turn  devised 
the  remedy  :  he  let  back  the  consoles  of  the  arms, 
and  the  panniers  could  spread  themselves  at  their 
own  sweet  will  on  the  front  of  the  chairs.  This 
other  arm-chair  ^  displays  an  ornamented  band 
fitted  on  to  its  frieze  (hence  the  disappearance  of 
fringes),  and  the  sides  of  the  seat  curve  inwards. 
This  one  is  still  further  advanced  in   evolution, 

1  Fig.  62. 

2  Fig.  69. 

3  Fig.  65. 

4  Fig.  62. 

5  Fig.  65. 


136    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

with  its  obliquely  set  doe's  foot  legs,  and  the 
frieze  itself  covered  with  carving  ;  these  others ' 
have  boldly  discarded  stretchers^  and  yet  the  first 
one  has  not  yet  arrived  at  set-back  arms,  and 
neither  of  them  has  arm  pads.  If  chairs  are  now 
able  to  dispense  with  stretchers,  it  is  because  they 
are  less  heavy  and  glide  easily  over  wooden  floors 
and  carpets,  while  heretofore  their  feet  were 
continually  catching  on  the  rough  squares  of 
stone  pavements.  Lastly,  here  is  a  chair  ^  with 
its  back  showing  the  wood,  and  all  curved  at  the 
top,  and  corners  almost  turned  up  Chinese 
fashion.  The  characteristic  of  the  Louis  XIV 
style  that  persists  longest  was  the  rectilinear  sides 
of  the  back ;  we  may  say  that  when  an  arm-chair 
or  a  chair  has  a  fiddle  back,  i.e.^  with  uprights 
bending  in  towards  the  centre  line,  it  is  no  longer 
Regency  but  frankly  Louis  XV. 

Besides  the  great  "confessional"  chair  with 
ears  and  solid  sides, ^  which  still  continues  to  exist, 
there  gradually  takes  shape  the  bergere  type. 
Here  is  one  (Fig.  74)  which  is  interesting  in  that 
it  clearly  shows  the  new  taste  for  clearly  defined 
outlines  in  visible  wood.  Sofas  {canapes  or 
sopJias),  which  were  rare  in  the  preceding 
period,  become  common  ;  from  their  original 
prototype,  the  rest-bed  with  two  ends,  definitely 
emerges  the  sofa,  which  is  a  very  wide  arm-chair, 
or   rather,   something  Hke   an   amalgamation  of 

1  Figs.  69  and  70. 

2  Fig.  72. 

3  Fig.  71. 


CANE    CHAIRS  137 

three   arm-chairs,    which  are    still    easily  to    be 
traced  in  it  at  this  period.' 

Cane  chairs  were  in  high  favour,  as  is  proved  by 
the  surprising  numbers  that  still  survive.  In 
summer  these  light,  cool  chairs  were  left  bare,  or 
were  simply  fitted  with  a  flat  "  carreau,"  or 
squab  cushion.  What  shows  that  they  were  all 
meant  to  have  this  is  the  little  cube-shaped 
piece  of  wood  left  uncarved  at  the  lower  end  of 
the  arm  consoles ;  the  cushion  was  notched  at 
the  front  corners,  and  kept  in  place  by  ribbons 
tied  so  as  to  hide  this  rough  place.  When 
winter  came  a  complete  upholstery  set  was 
slipped  over  the  chair  like  a  loose  cover,  or  else 
a  second  cushion  was  tied  on  to  the  back  with 
ribbons.  In  spite  of  their  humble  materials,  for 
they  are  made  of  beechwood,  painted  or  plain, 
they  sometimes  show  very  delicate  carving,^ 
especially  on  the  backs.  The  cane  sofa,  of  which 
a  photograph  is  given, ^  is  of  an  uncommon  type. 
It  has  an  unusually  elegant  basket  motive  repeated 
three  times  on  the  back.  The  two  chairs  in 
Figs.  79  and  81  indicate  the  limits  within  which 
the  curve  of  the  pied  de  hiclie  might  vary.  The 
happy  choice  of  this  curve,  the  proportions  of 
the  various  parts,  the  skilful  harmonising  of  the 
carved  motives  to  the  masses  they  decorate,  make 
excellent  examples  of  joiners'  work  of  the  legs  of 
the  quite  simple  bench  shown  in  Fig.  83. 

^F  ^F  "JF  tF  'JP  ^ 

1  Figs  75  and  76. 

2  Fig.  78. 

3  Fig.  76, 


138    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

Taken  all  in  all,  Regency  furniture  is  much 
more  capable  of  pleasing  us,  and  is  much  better 
adapted  to  our  modern  homes  than  that  of  the 
Louis  XIV  style.  The  reason  is  that  towards 
1720  the  great  transformation  had  been  very 
nearly  completed,  the  change  that  was  to  make 
our  forefathers'  way  of  living  very  different  from 
that  of  the  preceding  generation,  and  on  the 
whole  so  similar  to  our  own. 

Louis  XIV  furniture  was  made  to  satisfy  the 
very  pronounced  taste  for  show  of  people  who 
were  nevertheless  still  crude,  and  had  no  notion 
or  need  of  the  comfort  that  has  become  so 
essential  in  our  eyes.  Everything  else  was  sac- 
rificed to  a  magnificent  and  sumptuous  exterior. 
While  it  is  not  at  all  a  chimerical  project,  given 
taste,  patience  and  the  proper  financial  means, 
to  re-establish  a  country  house  or  a  small  chateau 
built  under  Louis  XV  or  Louis  XVI  in  its  original 
condition,  and  live  in  it  very  pleasantly  both 
summer  and  winter,  who  could  ever  dream  of 
reconstituting  accurately  an  interior  of  the  days 
of  Louis  XIV  ?     It  would  be  uninhabitable. 

How  then  can  we  find  a  use  for  furniture  of 
this  style  ?  It  is  almost  an  impossible  task  as  far 
as  flats  in  Paris  are  concerned;  it  is  too  huge 
in  dimensions  and  its  aspect  far  too  lacking  in 
intimacy.  But  for  certain  purposes,  in  a  large 
country  house,  it  would  be  without  a  rival.  Above 
all,  we  should  take  advantage  of  its  high  decorative 
value,  the  happy  way  it  "  peoples  "  big  spaces, 
and  how  its  lines  harmonise  with  those  cf  large 


A   LOUIS    XIV    SALON      139 

and  simple  architecture.  Nothing  could  be  more 
at  home  in  the  porch  of  an  unpretentious  chateau 
than  one  of  those  immense  cupboards  of  dark 
walnut  with  rich  mouldings,  whose  fine  lights 
alternate  with  the  deepest  of  shadows ;  or  than 
a  marble-topped  table,  solidly  fixed  upon  its  four 
baluster  legs,  with  their  cross-pieces  by  way  of 
stretcher,  and  a  number  of  arm-chairs  with  tall 
rectangular  backs,  all  drawn  up  by  the  wall  like 
lifeguardsmen  on  parade.  But  for  heaven's  sake 
let  no  one  have  them  covered  with  bits  of  old 
Flanders  verdure,  which  were  never  made  for  such 
a  fate  ! 

A  large  salon  furnished  in  the  Louis  XIV 
manner — without  the  state-bed,  of  course  ! — 
would  be  a  pretty  difficult  thing  to  achieve, 
though  very  interesting,  since  it  would  have  to 
be  completely  in  keeping.  These  articles  of 
furniture  are  of  a  nature  that  will  not  accom- 
modate itself  to  all  surroundings.  They  agree 
very  well  with  the  Louis  XIII  style,  for  the 
Louis  XIV  style  is,  after  all,  only  the  Louis  XIII 
enriched  and  refined,  or  with  the  Regency  style, 
since  it  is  derived  from  the  Louis  XIV  by  im- 
perceptible degrees.  But  they  clash  with  the 
furniture  of  the  eighteenth  century :  the  two 
styles  differ  in  the  mere  scale  of  size,  in  their 
range  of  colours,  and  in  their  lines.  The  only 
things  that  could  keep  house  tolerably  peacefully 
with  them  would  be  very  large  pieces  of  the 
Louis  XVI  style,  under-cupboards  or  great  "wall- 
pieces,"  certain  massive  tables  or  consoles,  simply 


140    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

because  the  master  lines  in  both  are  straight,  and 
the  few  curves  they  admit  are  similar  in  each 
style ;  and  both  alike  borrow  the  elements  of 
their  ornamentation  from  antiquity. 

Here  is  an  imaginary  sketch  of  such  a  great 
country  house  drawing-room.  On  the  walls, 
failing  tapestries,  which  would  of  course  be 
the  ideal  thing,  and  if  they  are  not  already 
panelled  or  wainscoted,  there  should  be  a  quite 
simple  plain  hanging ;  for  the  silk  stuffs  of  the 
seventeenth  century  were  much  too  sumptuous 
to  make  it  possible  for  m.odern  imitations  to 
take  their  place ;  ^  and  a  decoration  of  wide 
bands  of  two  glaring  colours  would  be  hard 
for  modern  eyes  to  accept.  On  the  floor  as 
many  Eastern  carpets  as  you  please.  For  the 
big  pieces  of  furniture  there  should  be  one  or 
two  cupboards,  but  preferably  Louis  XIII  pieces 
in  two  parts,  with  a  pediment ;  in  upholsterers' 
parlance,  they  "are  more  drawing-room  "  than  the 
Louis  XIV  cupboards ;  then  two  under-cupboards 
or  two  commodes,  forming  a  pair  as  nearly  as 
possible — we  must  never  forget  that  symmetry  is 
a  cardinal  law  of  the  style.  Tables  dating  from 
the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  with  pedestal 
or  console  legs,  are  not  easily  come  by ;  but  they 
might  be  replaced  by  those  tables  with  twisted 
legs,  which  may  be  Louis  XIII  style  if  you  like, 
but  which  were  almost  all  made  under  Louis  XIV, 
or  even  by  rectangular  tables  of  any  kind,  provided 

I  Unless  we  could  get  hold  of  crimson  damask  that  was  not 
too  cafaid,  as  our  fathers  used  to  say. 


A    DRAWING    ROOM       141 

they  are  hidden  under  those  valanced  covers  that 
hang  down  to  the  floor  and  obligingly  conceal 
everyth  ng — even  to  a  husband,  to  w^hom  it  is 
wished  to  reveal  the  attacks  to  which  his  wife  is 
exposed,  as  in  Tartufe.  A  sofa  will  be  prac- 
tically indispensable,  so  let  us  have  one  of  the 
Louis  XIV  side  of  the  Regency  style  rather  than 
the  Louis  XV  end.  As  for  the  other  seats,  the 
bulk  of  them  will  be  made  up  of  large  Louis  XIV 
arm-chairs.  After  all,  we  have  no  perukes  to 
humour,  and  if  you  lean  frankly  up  against  their 
backs  you  won't  be  at  all  badly  seated.  But  you 
will,  out  of  mere  necessity,  have  to  supplement 
them  with  some  handier  chairs.  You  will  find 
these  in  turned  Louis  XIII  chairs,  or  in  those 
excellent  caned  arm-chairs  and  ordinary  chairs  of 
the  Regency,  which  can  easily  be  obtained,  and 
which  you  can  equip  with  cushions  made  of  bits 
of  old  stuff.  Lastly,  there  will  be  stools,  benches 
with  pedestal  legs,  and  why  not  carreaux  (floor- 
squabs)  on  X.\it\r  porte-carreaux^  since  the  young 
women  and  girls  of  to-day  affect  to  sit  on  the 
ground,  just  as  Madame 's  maids  of  honour  used 
to  do,  imagining  that  it  is  the  last  word  in 
modernity  ? 

As  for  the  lighting,  there  must  be  a  crystal 
chandelier  ;  branched  sconces  with  mirror  plaque 
make  a  very  charming  mural  decoration,  but 
they  are  rare  ;  and  in  default  of  those  great  tall 
torch  candleholders  of  gilded  wood,  which  are 
not  precisely  common  objects  at  sales  or  in 
dealers'    shops,  you    will    place    girandoles    on 


142    LOUIS    XIV    FURNITURE 

gueridons  with  twisted  legs.  If  you  wish  to  hang 
your  pictures  in  the  true  seventeenth  century 
way,  you  must  hang  them  flat  against  the  wall, 
by  two  silk  or  gold-thread  cords,  dropping 
vertically  from  the  cornice  and  relieved  with  one 
or  two  big  tassels  of  passementerie,  through  which 
they  will  be  passed.  These  cords  might  also  start 
from  two  ringed  staples,  fixed  in  the  wall  about 
two  feet  above  the  top  of  the  frame,  and  disguised 
under  two  big  tassels.  Lastly,  all  the  little 
decorative  odds  and  ends  can  quite  correctly,  as 
we  have  seen,  be  Chinese,  Hindoo,  or  Persian,  at 
your  pleasure.  It  would  be  amusing — without 
going  quite  so  far  as  the  tinned  glass  houle  de 
iardin — to  reconstruct  a  chimney  set  of  china 
ornaments,  laid  out  on  shelves  or  tiny  gilded 
consoles:  but  before  undertaking  this  you  must 
think  over  the  trouble  of  taking  care  of  it  all.  .  .  . 
We  will  pause  at  this  example  and  leave  to 
our  readers  the  pleasure  of  making  other 
combinations  ^  with  those  handsome,  excellent 
pieces  of  furniture  of  two  centuries  ago — a  little 
inconvenient  perhaps,  but  such  speaking  witnesses 
to  a  period  when  France  became,  as  in  many 
another  thing,  the  foremost  nation  of  Europe  in 
the  art  of  beautifying  the  homes  of  human  beings. 

I  For  instance,  a  Regency  dining-room,  with  a  big  dresser- 
sideboard  from  Lorraine,  an  under-cupboard  as  a  serving  table, 
and  for  seats,  cane  chairs  of  painted  wood  or  those  high-backed 
chairs  covered  with  moqnctte,  in  stripes  of  three  colours,  which 
are  to  be  seen  in  Chardin's  pictures. 


t:7^ 


,^- 


^L^ 


■~-p 


Mi 


Fk;.  1.     CUPBOARD  DOOR,  OAK 


Fig.  2.    OAK  DOOR  LP:AF 


Fig.  3,     SMALL  CUPBOARD  IN  TWO  PARTS,  IN  OAK 


Fig.  4.     WALNIT  (UPBOAHD  WITH  OXK  DOOR  AND 
IKOM  TIIK  SOUTH-WEST  OF  FHANCK 


A  DRAWER, 


Fig,  5.    CUPBOARD  WITH  ONE  DOOR  AND  NEUTRAL  PANELS  AT  THE 
SIDES,  IN  WALNUT,  FROM  THE  SOUTH-WEST 


FKi.  G.     NORMAN  CUPBOARD,  OAK 


Fig.  7.     LARGE  CUPBOARD  WITH  ELABORATE  CORNICE,  IN  WALNUT, 
FROM  THE  SOUTH-WEST 


Flu.  8.  CUPBOARD  FROM  SAINTOXGE,  WITH  CARVED  PANELS,  IX  OAK 


Fig.  9.     LARGE  WALNUT  CUPBOARD,  WITH   ELABORATE 
-MOULDIXGS,  FROM  THE  SOUTH-WEST 


FJ(i.  10.  VERY  LARGK  CUPBOARD  WITH  ARCHKD  PEDIMKNT,  IN  WALNUT, 
END  OF  THE  STYLE.  FROM  THE  .SOUTH-WEST. 


Fig.  11.     LORRAIXE  CUPBOARD  IN  OAK,  WITH  MEDALLIONS, 
ORNAMENTED  WITH  MARQUETRY  STAKS 


FIG.  \1.     OAK  ALSATIAN  BUFFET  IN  TWO  SECTIONS,  WITH 
ARCHED  PEDIMENT 


Fig.  13.     V£BY  LARGE  DRESSER-SIDEBOARD-COMMODE,  FROM 
LORRAINE,  IN  CHERRYWOOD 


Fig.  15.  COFFER  SET  ON  A  TABLE  WITH  A  DRAWER, 
FROM  NORMANDY 


0>^^ 


5  '^ 


J  a  ■>  ■<  J  -I  J  > 


y 


B'Ki.  16.     COFFER  IN  PIGSKIN,  STUDDED  WITH  NAILS 


Fig.  20.     BED  WITH  CURVKD  Do.SSlEK  AND  CAXTOXMERE^ 


Fig.  22.    SMALL  TABLE  WITH  CONSOLE  LEGS,  IX  GILT  WOOD 


Fig.  23.    SMALL  TABLE  WITH  TURNED  BALUSTER  LEGS 


Fitx.  -24.     TABLE  WITH  TWISTED  LEGS,  FROM  NOKMAXDV 


^S5 


Fig.  27. 


LARGE  BUREAU  WITH  EKUIT  TURNED  BALUSTER  LKGS 
AND  NUMEROUS  DRAWERS 


Fig.  28,     SIMPLE  ARM-CHAIR  WITH  TURNED  BALUSTER  LEGS 


Fifi.  29.     GILT  WOOn  ARM-CHAIR,  COVERED  WITH  GRKKN  AM) 
GOLD   BROCADE 


80.    ARMCHAIR  OF  NATURAL  WALNUT,  COVERED  WITH  RED 
GENOA  VELVET 


Fig.  31.     ARM-CHAIR  OF  GILDKD  AND  PAINTED  WOOD,  (■(>VERP:D 
WITH  WHITE  AND  SILVER  BROCADE 


Fig.  32.     ARM-CHAIR  WITH  CONSOLE-SHAPED  LEGS,  WITH 
BEAUTIFUL  MOULDINGS 


Fig    :«.     CONFESSIONAL-SHAPED  EASY  CUAIll,  COVERED  WITH 
TAPESTRY  IN  BIG  AND  SMALL  STITCFI 


^^^^^■H 

'J'  \ 

^,.> 

>^1 


111  i 


-  i 


Fk;.  4l'.     door  leaf,  oak 


Fig.  43.    DO(jR  I^EAF,-  OAK 


FIG.  44.    PROVENCAL   CUPBOARD,  WITH   CABRIOLET  FEET,  IN  WALNUT 


Fig.  45.    NORMAN  CUPBOARD  WITH  CLAW  FEET,  IN  OAK 


Fig.  46.  LORRAINE  CUPBOARD  WITH  CABRIOLET  FEET,  IN  OAK 


Fk;.  47.    ALSATIAN  BUFFET  IN  TWO   SECTIONS,  WITH  SMALL 
MARQUETKY  PANELS 


sS!liJ 


Fig.  48.    ALSATIAN  BUFFET  IN  TWO  SECTIONS,  IN  OAK 


Fl<;.  49.    LARGE  SIDEBOAKD-DRKSSKH-COMMODE,   FROM   LORRAINE, 
WITH  INLAID  WORK 


Fig.  50.    NORMAN  DBESSEE-SIDEBOARD  IN  OAK 


^  i!  \ 

W'  T 

^^V-x^»i^ 

11 

W'^ 

i). 

w^ 

1 

,?i-i.„ii.iii ; 


iitiiWiii 


t 


Fig.  51.     SMALL  DRESSER-SIDEBOARD,  FROM  LORRAINE,  MADE  OF  OAK 


r 


I 


-^/v: 

r 


\i\ 


J' 


e« 


Figs.  56  and  57.    CASE  CLOCKS  FROM  LORRAINE,  IN  OAK 


'.f '•> 


FIG.  59.  SMALL  TABLE  WITH  DOES  FOOT  LEGS 


Fig.  60.     BED  WITH  LOW  POSTS  IX  GILDED  WOOD 


c 
> 

> 
CO 


iiiiipt^P||pii»i>eij»^; 


^T~~..y>?»fe*^,,i8pj,)..>„.';:,|3^^ 


Fl(i.  Ti.     LAKGK  "  OUNFESSIONAI/'  AKM-CHAIR 


FlO.  74.     BERGERE-ARM-CHATR,  CONFESSIONAL  SHAPE,    WITH  THE 
WOOD  SHOWING 


_  o- 

3  c 


C~"    '^?j^.?frr.T7^ 


Ik 


k  * 


Fig,  S5.     screen,  mounted  IN  NATURAL  WALNUT,  WITH  PANEL  OF 
SILVKR-GREY  DAMASK 


INDEX-GLOSSARY 


AcADEmE    Franc Ais    chairs, 

thirty-six,  not  forty,  1 05 
covered  in  moquette,  105 
Acanthus,  the  leaf  as  ornament, 

51,  52,  121,  123 
"  Accotoirs,"  arms  of  chairs,  94 
Aleppo  breccia,  131 
Allegorical       subjects,       very 

common,  49 
Amaranth  wood,  124, 125 
Angel  bed,  133 
"  Anse  de  panier"  basket  handle 

curve,  48,  122 
Antin  marble,  131 
Arlequin,  1 20 
Arm-chairs,  89-97 

simple,  95 
d'Armenonville,  Fleuriau  de,  108 
Attributes,  54,  124 
Aubusson  tapestries,  104 
Audran,  engraver,  13,  104 
d'Aviler,    Traitc    d  Architecture, 

quoted,  41 

Ballin,  Claude,  goldsmith,  20 
"  Bancelle,"  99 

of  solid  silver,  99 
"  Banquette,"  99 
Beauvais  tapestry,  104 
Beds,  72-79 

"  a  haute  piliers,"  73 

"a  I'imperiale,"  78 

"  a  quenouilles,"  73,  note 

Boikau's,  76 

"  disordered,"  79 

duchess,  78,  133 

Moliere's,  76,  Jj 

Regency  style,  1 33,  sqq. 

rest,  79 
Berain,  engraver,  13,  120 
"Bergere,"  95,  96 
"  Binettes,"  34 


Boffrand,     Germain,    decorates 

the  hotel  Soubise,  25 
Boileau,  his  bed,  76 

his  sofa,  99 
Bon  Boulogne,  the  painter,  II,  13 
"Bonnes  graces,"  part   of    bed 

hangings,  74 
Bookcase,  the,  68 

Boileau's,  68 
"Boucle,"  49 

"Boule  de  jardin,"  40,  142 
BouUe,  Andre  Charles,  18 

a  great  collector,  19,  20 

his  collaborators,  20 

his  four  sons,  2t 

his  technique,  61,  62 

in  the  transition  period,  124 
Branchi,  4 
Bronzes,  Cressent's,  28 

in  the  Regency  period,  125 
"  Bruges  satin  "  imitation  satin. 
Buffet,  69 

"  buffet-credence,"  68 

"  buffet-vaisselier  "  dresser- 
sideboard,  69 

"menager"        dresser-side- 
board in  Champagne,  69 

"palier  "  Normandy  dresser- 
sideboard,  69 
Bureau,  the,  85-87 

"  bureau-ministre,"  86 

flat-topped,  85 

ladies'  bureaux,  87 

"  scribannes,"  86 

Cabaret,  small  table  for  serving 

coffee,  etc.,  84 
Cabinets,  70 

Boulle    cabinets,    supreme 
expression   of  the  Louis 
XIV  style,  18 
elaborate,  16,  17 


143 


144 


INDEX-GLOSSARY 


Cabinets,  more  austere,  I/,  l8 
CafiSeri,  Filippo,  3,  1 3 
"  Campane,"     a     passementerie 
motive    shaped   like   a   small 
bell,  or  the  scalloped  hanging 
round  the  tester  of  a  bed. 
"  Canape,"  definitions,  98 

derivation,  97 
Cane  chairs,  ■'06,  107 

imported  from  Holland  or 

Flanders,  107 
Regency  styles,  137 
their  elegance,  137 
Cane  sofas,  137 

"  Cantonnieres,"    part    of     the 
hangings  of  a  bed  which  served 
to     close    from    outside     the 
angle     formed    by    the     two 
curtains  along  the  bed-post. 
"Caquetoire,"  gossip  chair,  97 
"Carreaux,"  lOl 
Caylus,  Madame  de,  I15 
Chairs,  Louis  XIV  style,  89-97 
"  confessional "    shape,    96, 

136 
"  crow's  beak,"  95 
"garnis  de  cuir,"  106 
handier  in  form,  134 
Regency  style,  134-137 
"Chaise  de  commodite,"  96 
"Chaises  a  peigner,"  109 
Champaigne,        Philippe       de, 

painter,  108 

Chardin,  eastern  traveller,  1 18 

"Chaussons,"   casings    covering 

the     extremities    of    legs    of 

tables,  etc.,  126.    Sec  "  Sabots  " 

Chinese  objects,  craze  for,  37,  38, 

39,  117 
decorations,  II8,  1 19 
porcelain,  40,  4 1 
Chute,  the  ornament  at  the  top 

of  the  legs   or  uprights  of  a 

piece  of  furniture,  50,  132 
de    Cla^ny,    chateau     built    for 

Mme.  de  Montespan,  22 
Clock  cases,  131 
Clocks,  130 
Coffers,  69,  70,  128 


Colbert,  4,  21 

Colombine,  120 

Colour  in  furniture,  very  bright, 

55-57 
Commode,  71-72 

"  a  la  Bagnolet,"  129 
"  a  la  Charolais,"  129 
"  a  la  Chartres,"  1 29 
"en  tombeau,"  7I 
Regency  shape,  1 29 
"Console   d'accotoirs,"    upright 

support  of  chair  arm,  94 
Corneille,  Michel,  painter,  13 
de   Cotte,   Robert,  architect  of 
the  Bishop's  Palace  at  Stras- 
bourg, 26 
Covering  materials  for  chairs, 

etc.,  IOI-IO6 
Coypel,  117 

Coysevox,  the  sculptor,  13 
Cressent,  Charles,  cabinet-maker, 
27-29,  121,  123,  125 
a  bureau  by,  125 
Cucci,  Domenico,  3,  I3 
Cupboards,  large,  65 
"  bonnetiere,"  67 
from  various  provinces  dis- 
tinguished, 67 
"  garde-robes,"  65,  note 
Louis  XIV  style,  66 
Regency,  1 27 
Cushions,  1 06,  108 

"  Damas  cafart,"  imitation 
damask  of  wool  and  cotton,  105 

De  Brienne,  Lomenie,  2 

D'Effiat,  the  Abbe,  his  bed,  55,  56 

Demi-buffet,  half-sideboard,  68 

Desportes,  Francois,  the  painter, 
II 

Diderot,  quota!,  109 

"  Dossier,"  head  or  foot  of  bed, 
etc.,  78, 79 

Dresser  sideboards,  128 

Duchess  bed,  78,  133 

Dufresny,  119 

Ebony,  124 
"En  facade,"  132 


INDEX-GLOSSARY 


145 


"Escabeau,"  100 
"Espagnolettes,"  ornaments    of 

carved  wood  or  of  gilt-chased 

bronze,  representing  a  female 

bust,  28,  123 
"Etoffes  de  la  Porte,"  common, 

cheap  materials,  105 

Facades,  35 

carved,  1 27 
Felletin  tapestry,  IO4 
"Feuille  d'eau,"  123 
"Fontanges,"'  34 
Fontenay,  Belin  de,  painter,  104 
Foucquet,  4,  108 
Foulon,  the  cabinet-maker,  1 3 
Furetiere,  quoted,  98,  100 
Furniture,  technique  of,  57-63 

Gacetti,  Giovanni,  4 

"  Gaiue  d'applique,"  a  tall  pe- 
destal placed  against  a  wall, 
and  carrying  a  bust,  a  clock, 
a  branched  candlestick,  etc.,  54 

"  Galants,"  the,  fastenings  for 
bed  curtains,  78 

Galland,  translator  of  "  The 
Thousand  and  One  Nights," 
119 

Garlands,  52 

Genoa  velvet,  73,  106 

Gilding,  "  a  la  detrempe,"  59 

Gilles,  120 

Gillot,  the  painter,  succeeds 
Berain,  25,  120 

Girandoles,  141 

Girardon,  sculptor,  20 

Gobelins,  the  factory  established 
to  design  and  make  tapestries, 
furniture,  etc.,  etc.,  for  Louis 
XIV,  12-21 

GoUe,  Pierre,  cabinet-maker,  3 
description  of  a  cabinet  by,  3 

"Gradin,"  80 

Guillain,  Simon,  sculptor,  2 

Hardouin-Mansart,   first 

architect  to  the  King,  9 
Harmant,  the  cabinet-maker,  13 


"  Haricot,"  122 

Harpagon,  in  VAvare,  quoted, 
103,  104 

Houasse,  painter,  13 

d'Humieres,  108 

Huyghens,  inventor  of  the  pen- 
dulum, 130 

ITALL\N  players,  120 

Jacob,  Georges,  cabinet- 
maker, 21 

La  Fontaine,  37,  38 
La  Moyne,  117 
La  Savonnerie  tapestry,  104 
La  Valliere,  Mile,  de,  7 
Lambert,  Marquise  de,  114 
Largilliere,  the  painter,  II 
Le  Brun,  Director  of  the  Arts  to 
Louis  XIV,  5 

Director  of  the  Gobelins,  14 

his  merits,  6 
Le  Lorrain,  Robert,  2 
Le  Pautre,  engraver,  13 
Leather,  for  chairs  and    sofas, 

106 
Leclerc,  engraver,  13 
Leczinska,  Marie,  her  bed,  133 
Lespagnandelle,  woodworker,  13 
Lighting,  Louis  XIV,  141,  I42 
Loir,  the  goldsmith,  13 
Loose  covers  for  cane  chairs,  1 37 
Louis  XIII,  I 
Louis  XIV,  French  spirit  under,  I 

his    bedchamber    described 
by  La  Fontaine,  37,  38 
Louis  XIV  style,   three  periods 
in,  7-10 

abuse  of  straight  lines,  42 

changing       customs       and 
manners,  23 

craze    for    things    Chinese 
37-39 

curves  in,  42 

favourite  motives,  48-54 

furniture  in  modern  rooms, 

138-139 
modified,  II6 

K 


146 


INDEX-GLOSSARY 


Louis    XIV    style,    a    "noble" 
style,  34 

ostentatious,  138 

right  angles  in,  43 

rise  of,  14,  15 

technique,  57-63 
Luynes,  Due  de,  133 

Maine,  Duchesse  de,  114 
"Mains,"  drawer  handles, 
Maintenon,  Mme.  de,  10 

goes  for  a  drive,  103 

her  bureau,  87 

her  niche,  10,  56 
"  Manchettes,"  arm-pads,  94,  135 
Mansard,  2 
Marly,  22 

Marot,  Daniel,  engraver. 
Marquetry  in  wood,  60 

other  materials,  6I 

the  BouUe  method,  61,  62 
"Mascarons,"  grotesque   mas 

as  ornaments,  50 
Mazarin,  I,  2,  4,  7 
Meissonier,  Juste-Aurele,  26 
"Menager,"  dresser-sideboard  in 

Champagne,  69 
Merlin,  the  goldsmith,  1 3 
Mezzetin,  120 
Migliorini,  Orazio,  4 

Ferdinando,  4 
Mignard,  the  painter,  II 
Moliere's  arm-chairs,  92 

his  bed,  76,  ^^ 
Monconys,  quoted, 
Monnoyer,  1 3 
Montespan,  Mme.  de,  7 
Montesquieu,  115 
Montigny,     Philippe,      cabinet- 
maker, 21 
"Moquade,"  104 
"Moquette,"  104 

"pied-court,"  104,  I05 
Mouldings,  47,  48,  I21,  122 
Mythological      motives,     very 
common,  50,  51 

Natoire,  painter,  II7 
Nocret,  painter,  13 


Oppenord,  Gilles-Marie,  26 
d'Orleans,      Philippe,      Regent 

after  Louis  XIV's  death,  24, 

113,  120 

"  Palter,"  Normandy  dresser- 
sideboard,  69 

Panels,  44-47 

"  Panniers,"  an  English  fashion, 
135 

Parangon,  "  touch,"  black  basalt, 
16 

Pictures,  to  hang  in  the  17th 
century  fashion,  I42 

"  Pied  de  biche,"  "  doe's  foot," 
cabriolet  leg,  81,  127,  129,  132 

"  Placet,"  100 

"  Pliant"  or  "ployant,"  100 

"  Point  de  Chine  "  tapestry  stitch, 
104 

"  Point  de  Hongrie,"  herring- 
bone tapestry  stitch,  103 

"  Point  de  Turque,"  Turkish 
stitch,  104 

Poitou,  Pierre,  cabinet-maker,  13 

"  Quart  de  rond,"  or  carderon, 
a  brass  moulding  running 
round  the  edge  of  the  top  of  a 
table-bureau,  125 

"Quenouilles,"  sheaths  for  bed- 
posts, 74 

"Ramasse."     Set;  "Roulette  " 

Rambouillet,  chateau  de,  107, 108 

Regency  style,  a  transition  be- 
tween Louis  XIV  and  Louis 
XV,  24,  \ll,sqq. 

"  Religieuses,"  wall  clocks,  130 

Rest  bed,  79 

Rigaud,  the  painter,  II 

Rocaille,  27,  120 

"  Roulette,"  a  kind  of  switch- 
back ;  also  "  Ramasse,"  8 

"  Ruelle,"  the,  75,  76 

"  Sabots."    See  "  Chaussons  " 
Saint-Simon,  quoted,  lOO,  108, 109 
Salon,  a  Louis  XIV,  139-142 


INDEX-GLOSSARY 


47 


Santerre,  the  painter,  II 

Scaramouche,  120 

Sceaux,  114 

Sconces,  142 

"Scribanne,"    large    bureau    of 

Dutch  or  Flemish  origin,  86 
Seats,  etiquette  of,  88,  89 
"  Serre-papiers,"  86 
Shell    as  motive  in  ornament, 

123,  124 
Silvia,  120 
Slodtz,  sculptor,  13 
Sofas,  97,  99,  136 
Sopha,  98 
"Soubassement,"  valance  of  bed, 

75. 
Soubise,    hotel  de,  decorations, 

116,  117 
Straw  chairs,  108 
Stretchers,  93 
Symmetry,  passion  for,  55 

Tables,  80-84 

"  Consoles,''  81 

Florence  tables,  80 

gaming  tables,  83,  84 

legs    "en    gaine "    or    "en 
balustre,"  8r 

night  tables,  84 

Regency  tables,  131,  132 

toilet  tables,  84 

writing  tables,  83 
"  Tabouret,"  100 
Tapestries  for  covering,  103 
Tavernier,  French  traveller  in 
the  East,  118 


Technique  under  the  Regency, 

124 
"Theatre  de  la  Foire,"  117 
Toilet  chairs,  109 
''Toilette,"  the,  84,85 
Trianon,  the  "porcelain,"  22 
"Tripe"    velvet    of    wool     on 

hemp,  105 
Trophies,  53 
Tubi,  sculptor,  13 

Under  cupboards,  68 
Utrecht  velvet,  made  in  Holland, 
called  Utrecht  moquette,  105 

Van  der  Meulen,  13 
Van  Opstal,  sculptor,  20 
Vaux-le-Vicomte,   chateau   and 

park,  4,  loS 
Velvet,  Genoa,  73,  106 

Utrecht,  105 
Veneering,  60 
"Vernis  des  Gobelins,"  a  kind 

of  lacquer,  63 
Versailles,    the    early,    and    its 

''  diversions,"  7 
de  Villers,  the  goldsmith,  13 
Violet  wood,  125 
Voltaire,  quoted,  114 

"Chines3   Orphan,"  a  play 
by,  118 

Warin,  sculptor,  20 
Watteau,  Antoine,  25,  120 
Wooden  chairs,  109 


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